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CslO 1530. Z

INttwc^ College Ifiitarp

FROM THE

FRANCIS PARKMAN

MEMORIAL FUND

FOR

CANADIAN HISTORY

ESTABUIHSD Iir 1908

AMONG THE ESKIMOS OF

LABRADOR

^^AMONG THE ESKIMOS

OF LABRADOR

A RECORD OF FIFE YEARS' CLOSE

INTERCOURSE WITH THE ESKIMO

TRIBES OF LABRADOR

S. K. HUTTOl^M.B., Ch.B. Vict.

FBLLOW OF TBI B0TAL GBOGSAmiCAL SOaSTV

WITH FORTY-SSTBN ILLUSTRATIONS
&^ TWO MAPS

^Philadelphia

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

LONDON : SEELEY, SERVICE 6* CO. LIMITED

I912

w -

/5<:X^

^ (jM^iii.

<, /U^^^'-i^^'tA

^t^u.^^

Printed by BALLAirrm, Hambov 6* Co.
At the Ballantyne Pren, Edxnbaifrh

mr WIFE

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The author would like to express his obligation
to Dr. Wilfrid T. Grenfell for the use of the
large map at end of this book.

OeUbar 1911.

CONTENTS

OHAPTER I
Hj naigbbour the Eskimo 21*24

GHAFTEB n

KiUinek — NMrisg KiUinek— BiUmofl on bowrd— The ttepping-
•tonee— Tent life— 4now honsee— The Iglo— Old TuglaW— The
tioablee of a photographer — Superstitions — The old woman of
the sea — ^The happj hunting grounds 25-46

CHAFTEB rn

Fint sight of Labrador— Airital at Okak ...... 46-4»4

CHAPTER IV

The freedng of the sea— Sealskin clothes and boots — ^Winter cold —

The home-ooming 55-^

OHAPTER V
LifetleJohn 66-76

OHAPTER VI
An Eskimo wedding-— Home lif e . 76-86

OHAPTER Vn

Choosing names — Eskimo childhood — Dolls — Sledges and dogs —

Panting on the ice — The little hnnter—In school . . 87-100

OHAPTER Vm

Birthdays — ^A hard-working people — Joshua the iyory career —

Clothing and cleanliness Old age 101-113

XIU

AMONG THE ESKIMOS OF

LABRADOR

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"'Old Rnth in her Best Dress Frontispiece

^^Labrador 20

A Labrador Iceberg 22

A Group of Killinek Eskimos 28

Old Tnglavi's Iglo 40

*The Sea Front at Okak 48

Ramah 48

nSskimo Faces 52

"A Fishing Camp 60

*^The Author^ Home from a Winter Walk . . . . 60

*^An Eskimo Nursemaid 82

'^The Baby's Nest 82

The Eskimo B07 96

The Eskimo Pocket 108

On the Way to Church 108

"^An Old Woman Fishing 110

""^An Eddmo Woman Scraping a Sealskin .110

'^Walrus Tusks and Ivory Carvings 124

" Found in Heathen Graves 124

"^An Interesting Event 138

^Dogs Fishing 150

^My Drivers 156

Gesh6, an Eskimo Sledge Dog 156

Julius and a Snow House 164

xvii %

•

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Th^ Tired Dogs 174

''The Unwilling Puppy 188

^A Sledge Parly 188

^The Author in Trayelling Costume 192

^Seal Hunters 210

^An Eskimo with his Kajak 222

^Home fix>m the Hunt 250

Vinter Fishing 230

TThe Spring Flitting 242

'Hie Breaking Ice 248

-Tent Life 254

""Maria 270

^Okak Hospital 270

^An Eskimo Great-Grandmother 284

"An Eskimo Woman from Nachvak 294

''Okl Iglos at Hebron 308

"An Elaborate Snow Porch 814

^An Eskimo Boat Builder 382

Jerry, Organist and Bandmaster at Okak .... 382

The Eskimo Schoolmaster 836

xvm

•Button Mands

SKETCH MAP OF THE COAST OF LABRADOR

AMONG

THE ESKIMOS OF LABRADOR

CHAPTER I

f The Eskimos

THIS book presents a plain picture of the
Eskimos of Labrador, a people among whom
I have lived for some years past, and with whom I
have come into the closest contact ; in their homes,
in their work, in their hunting and their journeys,
in sickness and in health. I called them my
neighbours, not only because they lived close by,
but because they showed kindness to me; and I
have pictured them as I found them, a kindly and
hospitable folk, quick to anger and quick to forgive,
whose outlook on life, whose thoughts and ways of
reasoning, differ strangely from our own.

The land they live in is a contrast to ours. Can
we imagine a wider difference than that between
England — the smiling ''merrie England" that the
poets love to sing — ^and the bleak, rock-bound coast
which is the home of my neighbour the Eskimo?
We speak of Labrador as a cotmtry, but, if truth
be told, we only know it as a coast To the
Eskimos it is very little more. Their home is by

the water's edge: they gain their living from the

THE ESKIMOS

sea. Fishing, sealing, and walrus-hunting are their
staple pursuits; their knowledge of the land itself
is limited to the few miles they tramp to their fox-
' traps, and the longer journeys that they make in
the spring on the tracks of the reindeer. They
tell of a vast rolling wilderness behind the rocky
heights that front the sea ; of untold miles of crisp
moss upon which no man has ever trodden. Their
words bring up an awesome pictiue of a bare and
desolate waste, silent but for the twittering of birds
and the dismal howling of the hungry wolf, or the
even more dismal howling of the wind. An un-
known landl With nothing to tempt the seeker
for wealth, and little to attract the hardy explorer,
it remains, year after year, wrapped in its awful
solitude. The footsteps of pioneers have already
crossed the wilderness, but behind the rocky height
of the Eskimo Labrador the solitude remains.

Here and there along the coast line of this lonely
land are little clusters of huts and tents, and in
them dwell the people who have made it their home
— the Innuit race, ** the People," as they call them-
selves, better known as the Eskimos.

How they came to the land is a matter for con-
jecture. A study of their features and habits and
language brings me to the conclusion that they are
physically allied to the Mongols of Asia; they areK
obviously identical with the Eskimos of GreenlandA
and closely related to those of Alaska.

And so it seems likely that in bygone times
their forefathers dwelt upon the Siberian coasL
Perhaps their adventurous spirit drove them forth»
perhaps tribal warfare made them fly for their lives ;
however that may have been, it seems that they

/ ^

Labkador : A View westwakd, nbak Okak
Bvc bUck tacia, windina fiordi, bold beicbu uid hendluidi, a pore md bnci
tbe pcrfeclion of the ibart lamnin. ■baandLag in anbeuable iwHrmK.

A Lahrador Icebkr(

icse Lnbcm pu»eB tlic cwul ID
1 impobible to rvKlilc the huge

THE ESKIMOS

launched their skin canoes and square-^nded umiaks
(or women's hoats), and crossed the perilous waters
of what we know as Behring's Strait. They
found fish and seals along the Alaskan coast, and
some were well content to settle there. Others
fSured further, slowly wandering along the Norths
West Passage before ever the civilised world dreamt
of its existence. Some reached Greenland; some
came southward to Labrador; wherever they saw
seals in plenty, there they stayed until their roving
spirit drove them on. And so it seems to have
come about that in Alaska, in Baffin's Land, in
Greenland and Labrador, there are Eskimos, wide
apart as miles go, but close together in i^ech and
ways of living. We do not know whether the
North- West Passage holds any proof of this long-
ago migration ; its shores are barren and unexplored ;
but probably upon this or that rocky promontory
could be found the typical burying-places of the
heathen Eskimos.

But I must bring my story into the bounds of
modem times. To write of the Eskimos as they
were in bygone days would be a fascinating thing,
but it would mean building upon a slender foun-
dation. No, the past of the Eskimo people must
always remain something of a mystery. They have
no written records: they are a nation without a
history I

It is not very many years since civilization

reached them ; and so as I wandered among the hills

of Labrador I found flint weapons and soft stone

cooking-pots beside graves whose bones had not yet

returned to dust. Armed with their flint-tipped

arrows they hunted the bear and the reindeer;

THE ESKIMOS

balanced in tiny skin canoes they followed the seal
and the walrus, with flint harpoon ready to hand ;
they looked after the needs of their bodies, and that
was all. They superstitiously dreaded some vague
and malignant Power ; they paid tribute to the men
who were supposed to live in league with this
Being; they lived their hopeless life and passed
away into the dark. Generation followed generation
in the same dismal course : they made no progress.
It was to this people that the missionaries of the
Moravian Church came in the year 1771, bringing the
good news of Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world,
and bringing a power into the hearts of the Eskimos
that has elevated them to a life of hope and progress,
and made them law-abiding. Christian citizens.

The nearest glimpse we can get of the Eskimos
as they were in olden times, is among that tribe
which has settled at Killinek, the northernmost tip
of Labrador. I have thought it well, therefore, to
write first of them, and then to turn back to my old
home at Okak, and write of the Eskimos as I knew
them so well — a people bom and brought up in
Christian villages, and living the life which God
intended them to live on their bare and inhospitable
coast, unspoiled by that darker side which so often
shows uppermost when civilization reaches nature
peoples.

CHAPTER II

Nearino Eillinck — Eskimos on Board — My Guide — The Step*
PING Stones — ^Tent Lif&— Snow Houses— The Iglo — Old
TuGLAvi — ^The Troubles of a Photographer — Superstitions
— ^The Old Woman of the Sea — ^The Happy Hunting
Grounds — Leaving Kilunek

IT was a sunny September morning in 1908. I
stood on the deck of the little Mission ship
Harmony^ watching the bare black rocks of the
northernmost Labrador. I was going to see Killinek,
one of the loneliest Mission stations in the world.
The scenery was terribly bleak, in spite of the sun-
shme, and I thought to myself, ''What an unpromising
place 1 Nothing to see but rocks and water ! " On the
one hand the restless Atlantic, broken here and there
by tiny islets, mere jagged rocks sticking out of the
water, and half buried in foam ; on the other hand a
line of dull coast rising steeply from the sea ; a rugged
line of black, only relieved by the scattered patches
of grey where the moss had found a hold, and by
the streaks of rusty iron ore and the glint of falling
water. It was a picture of utter desolation, and yet
I knew that somewhere among those rocks an Eskimo
village nestled ; those rocks, to me no more than a
picture of barren grandeur, had a different look to
Eskimo eyes. They brought visions of seals and
walrus, of fat codfish eager to be taken, of shy birds

trapped on their flight to more promising places;

ESKIMOS ON BOARD

dreams, in fact, of plenty; and that was why this
tribe of wanderibQg hunters settled in KiUinek.

The stout little vessel fought her Way through the
awkward currents of Gray's Straits : there were two
men clinging to the wheel, steadying the ship as she
danced and throbbed, and the water was all broken
by little whirlpools on which the sea-birds feared to
settle. But this was the way to KiUinek; and
presently we caught a glimpse of the village through
a rift in the line of rocks. A flag fluttered up as we
passed, and little pufis of smoke among the Eskimo
tents showed us that the people were firing guns to
welcome the ship, tt seemed only a tiny point of
life in the most desolate land imaginable, but it
brightened us up ; and when the rocks hid it from us
as we passed on towards the harbour mouth, we felt
as if the sunshine had gone.

We turned into a narrow, deep channel, plenti-
fully sprinkled with buoys and marks, and dropped
anchor in sight of the Mission station. We were at
once surrounded by a swarm of skin canoes, each
paddled by a smiling, brown-faced Eskimo. Boats,
crowded with women, and with the water all but
pouring in, flopped about, waiting for a chance to
come alongside; and almost as soon as the anchor
had found the bottom the deck was crowded. The
folks jostled one another, and peered into our faces.
'* Aksunai, aksunai," they said; *' welcome I be strong."
Those of us who knew how to talk started chatting
right away ; the less favoured contented themselves
with handshakes and grins, and shouts of ** Hooks-
and-eyes " or " Auctioneer," a parody of " Aksunai,*'
at which the Eskimos laughed uproariously. The

cook's gaUey was besi^fed : here was something new.

9»

MY GUIDE

'^ Ai-ai's " of astonishment greeted the mystery of
potato peeling. The ship's cat caused quite a stampede,
to its own tremendous alarm. It bounded up the /
rigging like a streak, amid a chorus of ** Sun& un4 "
(what's that) ?— " Kapp§^ " (what an awful thing) 1
There it sat palpitating, with hair all bristling, while
some one who had seen a cat before told his excited
fijends that this was ** Poosee-kuU&k " (poor little
pussy) I

But this was no time for dawdling ; here was a
fine day going, with work waiting to be done. The
mate's voice called for hatches off, and everybody
volunteered for work. The event of the year, the
unloading of the ship, had begun.

I went ashore to explore the village. It was no
easy matter to get a guide, because everybody was
busy on the ship or on the landing-stage; but I
finally managed to button-hole a middle-aged man
(only he had no button-holes, nor yet buttons,
because he wore the characteristic Eskimo ** attigdk "
or ** dicky "), who spent all his spare time in leading
me aroimd and showing me the sights. We climbed
the hill behind the village, so that I might get some
idea of the scenery. Like a true Eskimo he trotted
up at about five miles an hour, while I panted and
stumbled behind him in a partly successfiil attempt
to keep him in sight.

From the top of the hill we saw the snow-capped
heights of inland Labrador, and on the seaward
horizon the long chain of flat islands which we call
the " Buttons."

Bob, or Baab, as he called himself, grew com-
municative.

<' Those are the Tutiat," he said.

THE STEPPING-STONES

"Tutjat," I thought, "the Stepping Stones";
and there, flashed through my mind the old storjr
that the Eskimos tell, how their forefathers visited
the Innuit of the Far North long, long ago.

They came along the coast, so runs the story,
to KiUinek — ^the End, or Limit, as the meaning of
the word is — and crossed Gray's Strait in their skin
canoes. They travelled from one to the other of the
long chain of islands as they journeyed northward,
and called them Tutjat or Stepping Stones as a
memorial.

It struck me that the name is a proof of the
truth of the old tale. The name remains, but the
story is half forgotten.

Sometimes in an evening, when pipes are lit
and tongues are loosed, the Eskimos will talk of
those old times. They will tell how their ancestors
made this marvellous journey, and found a people
across the sea whose words they could understand :
Eskimos they were, and only different from the
Innuit of Labrador because they had lived apart
so long.

And as we looked at the Button Islands, Bob

had a feur-away look in his restless eyes. He ran

his Angers through his tumbled hair ; his face grew

eager ; he waved his pipe towards the north. ** Yes,"

he said, " those are the Tutjat ; those are the Tutjat.

I went there last autumn, and found plenty of seals.

I got a big walrus : I went after him in my kajak

(skin canoe), and I harpooned him. I chose him

because he was big : he had such fine tusks to make

new harpoons, and his skin was good and thick and

strong, and I wanted a new whip for the dogs.

Yes, those are the Tutjat, and I have been there.

A Group of Kilunbk Eskimos

lin nunJf In'ma- buli'ud tuu.'wilhout fini, cheerfully cnduiinti

THE STEPPING-STONES

I shall go again some day, for I think I shall catch
a white bear, and his skin is fine and warm. It is
only seldom that we can go to the Tutjat, for the
tide is very strong against our kajaks, and it is far.
But I will go to the farthest of the Tutjat, where
we can sometimes see Tutjarluk/'

Tutj&rluk I Another link in the old chain I

From the farthest of the Button Islands, or
Stepping Stones, they can sometimes see Tutj4rluk,
" the Big Stepping Stone."

There it is, away in the haze, a blue-grey patch
where sky and sea meet ; Resolution Island, ** the
Big Stepping Stone " of the old Eskimo story. The
link is perfect, for from Resolution Island it is
but a step to Baffin's Land.

It was fine to see the enthusiasm in Bob's ruddy
Eskimo face as he thought of that white bear hunt
which was awaiting him among the Tutjat ; but he
had said his say ; he smoothed his mop of coal-black
hair with his broad, plump hand, and with his pipe
between his teeth he turned to lead me to the village.

" Where do you live ? " I asked him.

He pointed along a winding stony path to a
smoke-blackened calico tent. ** Tuppiga " (my tent),
he said, and trotted amiably on. The tent was no
more than a bunch of poles with a calico cover
thrown over them; the poles stuck out through a
hole in the top, and the cover was kept in place by
big stones laid upon its edge. The ground was too
rocky for tent-pegs, and doubtless stones were the
next best thing ; but I thought with a shiver of the
probable fate of the tent on some wild autumn night.

" Does your tent never blow over ? " I said.

He laughed. ** Oh yes, it sometimes blows over

TENT LIFE

when the wmd is strong ; but k%ifanna (never mind),
what does it matter? we can soon crawl out and
set it on its poles again and it is all right The
stones do not blow away; they stay there all the
time. When the winter comes, and we find snow to
build snow houses, we leave the stones lying till we
can come again in the spring. I always put my
tent in the same place, for it is a good place. That
big rock shelters us from the north-west wind, and
we can drink from that stream of water near by;
besides, we are close to the sea, and I can soon launch
my skin canoe and go hunting the seals. Yes, it is
a good place, and I shall come again next year.
Some of the people do not find good places ; they go
to fresh places each year ; but my place is good."

His face was aglow again and I caught some of
his emotion ; I felt the glamour of his simple life.
I thought of the many times when I have come
across the rings of stones, relics of deserted tenting-
places. They are generally in some grassy nook
near the seashore. The rank grass grows over and
among them, and the sandy space which they surround
is strewn with fishbones and shells and all the other
litter of Eskimo tent life. There is an air of desola-
tion about these rings of stones. Their owners have
sought better places for their tents ; they have had
no fortune at the fishing and have gone to try
elsewhere; perhaps they have passed away and are
forgotten.

Bob stood for a moment deep in thought and

gently smiling. He was dreaming of bygone

tenting times ; he was seeing visions of rare hauls of

seals and fish for the future ; but his restless eyes

lit on his tent again and he trotted on.

TENT LIFE

We came upon a little girl squatting on the
^fround, solemnly stirring the contents of a big black
cooking-pot which stood upon a rough fireplace of
stones. She fed the fire with bits of brushwood and
** shooed" the hungry dogs away. She looked up
shyly as we passed, and I saw the family likeness at
once. She had the same tumbled mop of black hair,
the tame little twinkling eyes, the same small nose
and plump ruddy cheeks, the same expression of
face, as her father. The sound of our footsteps
brought three or four other small folks scrambling
out of the tent, each one a repetition of the oth^*s on
a different scale. They joined hands and stood in
a row, gating with awestruck eyes at the stranger.
This was evidently part of Bob's family, and a
curious-looking lot they were. It was quite obvious
that the rule of inheritance was observed in these
youngsters' clothing. The trousers which adorned
the bigger boy were evidently Bob's, patched and
puckered to tlie required size; one little girl had
a woman's skirt on, all the way up, which gave her
quite a picturesque appearance; they all seemed
to be wearing somebody else's boots. And quite
right, too, I thought. They are scrambling over
the rocks all day long, romping with the dogs
and getting their clothes torn and muddied and
soaked ; so I rather admired the wisdom of their
mother in dressing them up anyhow for their play.
The children seemed quite content to stare until
further orders : they only grunted when I said
** Aksunai," though a grunt in Eskimo is quite poUte ;
so I took a peep into the tent.

The half furthest from the door was evidently

the sleeping-place, for it was occupied by a sort of

TENT LIFE

platform of moss and earth spread with skins. The
mother was sitting on the edge of the bed, kneading
one of her husband's boots. She looked up as we
appeared, with a good-humoured smile on her hand-
some ruddy face, and quietly went on with her
kneading.

Other boots, turned inside out to dry, hung from
the poles above her head ; they were waiting to be
rubbed. This is one of the things that an Eskimo
expects of his wife ; she must keep his boots soft 4
and you can well imagine the hunter coming in
tired from his latest expedition, sprawling with loud
snores upon the platform bed, while his wife takes
his boots and turns them inside out to dry, and
patiently rubs them supple, ready for his next excur-
sion. Eskimo hunters take a pride in .their boots.

Bob's wife reached for another boot, and went
on with her kneading.

Close beside her, on an upturned tub, stood the
seal-oil lamp. It was no more than a half-moon-
shaped trough, hollowed from a soft stone, and half
filled with thick brown seal-oil. A flat wick of moss
leaned oh the edge of the trough, dipping into the
oil, and burning with a steady white flame.

Mrs. Bob seemed to be doing a little cookery
over her primitive lamp. A battered meat-tin, a
castaway, no doubt, from the Mission ship, hung by
a string from one of the tent-poles, and twisted,
bubbling merrily, over the flame. From time to
time she picked up a spike of bone which lay beside
her, and poked the wick. This seemed to be all
the attention the lamp needed. On the floor I saw
a pot of seal's blubber, from which the oil was
oozing. From this she could easily fill the lamp

- — H

TENT LIFE

if it should bum low. I warrant she licks her
fingers after the filling ; and more than that, if she
happens to fill the trough of the lamp too full I can
well imagine her taking a few sips.

I could not do much more than look into Bob's
tent; there was no room. The floor was strewn
with relics of work and mealtimes ; scraps of seal-
skin, fishbones, chips of wood, bits of ' calico, either
flung down as useless or left by the children when
we interrupted their play. A fat, pale-faced baby
was crawling about, exercising its sturdy limbs
before returning to that queerest of queer cradles,
the hood of its mother's smock. It found a bone, and
squatted to gnaw it, cutting its teeth and acquiring
a taste for the fishy flavour of seal meat at the same
time. A family of pups romped and tumbled and
snarled in their own comer ; and all around the edge
of the tent lay dogs' harness, spare clothing, sails
for the boat, and pots of seal meat and fish heads.

This was a Killinek Eskimo's home.

Bob was well-to-do in his way. He had a home
of his own, though it was only a grimy little tent,
so small that I wondered how they all packed them-
selves in for the night.

Some folks are not so well ofi*; they have to
share a tent with some other family, a custom which
leads to endless quarrels and jealousies. However,
times are better since the missionaries came, and
the aim of every man to have his own tent or house
is being realised in Killinek, just as it has been
realised all along the coast.

And Bob was {nroud of his calico home.

The walls fiapped in the breeze and strained
against the poles.

TENT LIFE

** Doesn't the rain come in sometimes ?" I asked.

Bob looked at the hole in the top of the tent,
where the cover was gathered round the bunch of
poles. *'0h yes/' he said, ''the rain sometimes
comes in and trickles down the poles, but we get out
of the way." Admirable idea ! Imagine the tent-
dwellers on a rainy night. With real Eskimo good
humour they arrange themselves between the poles
and watch the drops collect and trickle and drip beside
them. What care they ? They are dry, and that is
something to be thankful for. But sometimes they
are wet, for calico is not proof against the torrential
downpour that sometimes comes in summer time at
Killinek. I have seen them at work after a rainy
night, soaked and bedraggled, and looking, as some-
body said, like drowned rats I But they went about
their work with the same placid smile ; their clothes
would dry in the wind and the sunshine. It is part
of their life : they are content to take the rough and
the smooth together.

The himter comes home from his morning's toil,
drenched with the rain and the spray. There is no
fire to give him warmth ; no stove to dry his sodden
clothes ; nothing but a smoky seal-oil lamp. He
takes no heed. He contentedly munches his meal
of dried fish heads or raw seal meat, and flings
himself, wet as he is, on to the bed of moss and skins,
to sleep like a tired child. They are a wonderfully
hardy folk, able to endure the incidents of their
rough life simply because it is their nature. Hunger
and exposure are parts of the very existence of a
hunter, and only seem to hard^i him the more.

Sometimes, I think, the cold must be fearful for

those Killinek tent-dwellers. From the moist days

TENT LIFE

of May, when the snow houses begin to melt and

threaten to tumble in upon their occupants, all

through the changeable weather of the short summer

and the biting autumn storms, the Killinek Eskimos

live in their tents. Cheerfully, and without a

thought that it is anything out of the ordinary, they

endure what would kill a European outright. In

November, when the sea is freezing and the rocks are

coated with salt-water ice, and the snow begins to

drift upon the land, they are still in their calico tents.

They put on their sealskin clothes, and defy the cold.

Bob seemed rather surprised when I asked him

whether they did not find it cold in the autumn.

" ni&le " (certainly), he said, " unet " ; and with that

untranslateable answer I had to be content. ** Unet "

may mean almost an3rthing, or it may be simply an

expression and mean nothing. In Bob's case I took

it to mean " Of course ; what a question 1 whatever

did you expect ? " Bob's eyes twinkled when I spoke

of the autumn. *' Plenty of seals in autumn," he said.

I knew what that meant to Bob ; it meant plenty of

food and clothes and boots. The autumn seal hunt

comes at a most opportune time. It gives the

people plenty of their best and most fattening food

just when the cold weather is beginning to nip ; it

makes them sleek and plump for the winter. Even

at KiUinek the Eskimos do not look unduly fat ;

their limbs have the smooth roundness of a child's ;

they are shapely and weU proportioned ; but, all the

same, they have a fine natural protection against the

cold. They need no fire to warm them. I have

seen them on their visits .to stations further south,

where the huts are warmed by stoves. They pant

and perspire with the heat, and are glad to get out

SNOW HOUSES

of doors again. One woman who came to live at

Okak complained bitterly of the warmth. ''It is

breaking my life/' she said, ''it is breaking my

life " ; and it was fully a year before she became

acclimatised.

They escape from some of the hardships of

tent life when the time comes to move into

snow houses. It is generally on towards December

before the snow lies hard enough for building ; the

time varies, of course, according to the weather.

Mere snow is not enough ; it must have been beaten

to stony hardness by the wind, and toughened by the

cold, before it is fit to be cut into really durable

blocks. A snow house for an odd night's shelter on

a journey can be put up in a couple of hours, but a

IQllinek snow house, which must stand for weeks or

even months, takes a day or more in building.

There are no jerry-workmen in Killinek. They

shape the blocks with the greatest care, fitting and

smoothing them into a tough wall in which no joints

are to be seen, and making the house into a perfect

beehive shape without a weak spot in it. The floor

is below the level of the snow around, because the

blocks for building are cut from within the circle of

the wall. This makes the house look small and low ;

but I know of one which was fourteen feet across,

and in which the missionary, a six-foot man, could

stand upright and walk. Every house is protected

by a wall of snow built round it a few feet away ;

this is a wise provision in a windy land like Labrador,

for it keeps the wind away, and the storms can only

whistle about the rounded top, which offers the best

possible shape for safety.

The door is a hole, closed by a slab of frozen

^H^Y^

SNOW HOUSES

snow, and reached by a tunnel along which it is just
possible for a man to crawl. The tunnel is dug so
that it runs uphill to the door ; partly because snow
houses are usually built on a slope or bank, and
partly because it is the right thing to the inscrutable
Eskimo mind.

The window is a sheet of clear fresh-water ice,
which lights the house most gloriously. The inside
of a new snow house is dazzlingly bright ; even the
mean glimmer of the seal-oil lamp is reflected and
magnified by the shining white walls. That is a
new snow house: but after a few weeks, what a
change I The walls are begrimed with soot and
grease, the floor is strewn with all the litter of an
Eskimo dwelling, the air is stuffy and ill smelling
— ^nay, after a time the place becomes unbearable -^
even to its Eskimo tenants, and they build them- ^
selves a new house somewhere else. Not a very
difficult matter where good snow for building is so
ready to hand I

I have found that a snow house makes a fairly
snug shelter, though the air never gets much above
freezing-point.

Some men ** do things in style," and make quite
a suite of rooms by joining two or three snow huts
by tunnels. One hut serves as the living room, and
harbours the big stone lamp or stove ; another is
the bedroom, spread with polar bear skins; and a
third may be a sort of unsavoury store house, piled
with dogs' harness, seal blubber, skins, dried meat
and fish, and the tent stowed away till the thaw
comes.

Beyond the snow house while the snow is hard,

and the tent for the rest of the year, the Killinek

THE IGLO

Eskimos have very little choice in the matter of
housing ; and to look at them, broad and strapping
folks that they are, you would agree that such a life
suits them well« Since the Mission reacted them,
a few families have respectable little houses of
boards; but in former times the only alternative
to tents and snow houses was the awful Eskinoio
iglo. There are a few of these iglos in Killinek —
dark and noisome dens.

Try to picture a hut of turf and stones, propped,
maybe, on rough stumps and branches which have
been toilsomely gathered from the sea: the only
ventilation is the occasional breath of air that wafts
sluggishly along the dark tunnel-like porch; the
only window is a square of membrane, brown and
greasy-looking, stretched over a hole in the roof;
the floor is a sodden patch of trampled mud ! That
is a heathen Eskimo iglo; and I cannot imagine
anjrthing more dismally unhealthy.

If wooden houses are to be, the wood must be

brought by ship. There are no trees in Killinek.

The land looked bare and bleak enough, I thought,

as I saw it from the ship ; it looked far barer when

I was actually on it, wandering among the hills.

There were plenty of wild flowers, even in Killind^,

and plenty of moss ; but no wood. Here and there

I came upon patches of feeble-looking brushwood

crawling among the stones, dry and wizened, and

this, I suppose, serves the people for fuel; but the

ground was bare of the berries which are such a

plentiful food-supply further south. The Killinek

people have to go far afield to gather berries, miles

and miles of trudging over moss and rocks, to find

here and there a sheltered patch, while the Eskimos

OLD TUGLAVI

at Ramah, only 150 miles away, gather barrelfiils
with the greatest ease. Killinek is the coldest, most
dismal, and barest of all the Labrador coast — but
it is the best seal and walrus hunting place of all.
The people overcome their difficulties somehow or
other. One old woman told me that she remembered
how the men used to travel as far as Okak, 800 miles
away, to fetch long trees for making sledges and
kajaJ^s. Now they rely on the Mission, and on
chance trading or whaling ships, for an occasional
plank, or, greatest prize of all, a stick of tough
juniper wood or even an old baluster rail to make
a paddle.

My visit to Killinek would not be chronicled
completely if I said nothing about old Tuglavi. I
saw him many a time as I wandered about among
the rocks and the tents; a weird, wild-looking old
man, with a childish smile on his face. He used
to follow me by hours at a time, muttering strangely
to himself, and answering all my questions with
only a broadening of his constant smile. Poor old
Tuglavi ! I gave up trying to draw any information
out of him after I had tried to take his portrait.
I armed myself with a ship's biscuit, and went in
search of Tuglavi. I found him near his iglo, and
offered him the biscuit.

He took it with a most delighted ** Thank you " :
*• Nakome-e-e-ek," he said, " nakomek."

'* Adsiliorlagit-ai " (let me take your photograph).

" Sua ? " (what ?)

" Will you let me make a likeness of you ? "

'^Atsuk (I don't know). May I eat the

biscuit?"

" Yes, presently ; just stand over here."

OLD TUGLAVI

" Nerrilangale " (let me eat it), and he turned his
back on me.

"All right; just turn round iand stand still a
moment."

" Nerrilangale, ner-ri-langa-le-e-e-e *' ; and the

poor old man broke down into sobs and ambled off

home munching his precious biscuit. I was left

gazing. I never caught him again. Once or twice

I heard his shuffling step behind me, and a querulous

voice said " I want another biscuit," but not another

word could I get out of Tuglavi. What I know

about him I have heard from the missionary. He is

a famous old heathen chief. He has spent all his

life camped among the rocks of the northern Labrador,

and nobody knows how old he is. His people have

come to the Mission station, bringing him with them ;

they have heard from other Eskimos of the preaching

of the Word of God, and they have come to hear it ;

but Tuglavi cannot understand. His mind has failed;

he is in his second childhood, and spends his time

in aimless wanderings and in watching whatever

there is to be seen. He manifests an insatiable

curiosity, and gets into the Mission house as often as

he can, just for the sake of a look round. The kitchen

is his chief joy; European cookery is something

new to Tuglavi ; and he has even been found tasting

the contents of the cooking-pots. The missionary

good-naturedly put up with the old man's childish

ways until he discovered him one day hanging head

downwards over the edge of the kitchen water-tank.

He seized the struggling legs and hauled their owner

into safety. Old Tuglavi had only been getting a

drink I Missionaries do not often lock their doors,

for fear of inspiring mistrust^ but in this case it

TROUBLES OF A PHOTOGRAPHER

seemed best to keep the old man out of harm's way
by putting on an extra latch. Tuglavi soon solved
this problem. He found an old broken fork, with
only one prong, and by dint of much scratching he
managed to raise the latch and let himself in. The
missionary promptly forfeited the fork, whereupon
old Tuglavi, with much sobbing and lamentation,
went home to tell his woes. He presently came
back to ask for payment for the fork !

Tuglavi was still at his childish wanderings when
I was in Killinek, but the door was no longer locked.
Some one was on guard, ready to cheer the old man
up by the gift of some scrap or other of food, and
show him out again.

Tuglavi brought p/ ^ rtr wives with him to the
Mission station. One was very old — his lifelong
companion, in fact, and past work — ^almost as feeble
as the old man himself; so Tuglavi had married a
young wife as well, so as to have somebody at home
to do the work ! I cannot imagine that there was
much peace in Tuglavi's iglo.

It is not to be wondered at that superstition is
strong among these Killinek folk, so lately utterly
heathen, without knowledge of Christianity or of
civilisation. The first glimpse I had of it was in
the fear that some of them had of being photo-
graphed.

I chanced to meet a young man whose face was
a perfect picture of the heathen Eskimo type, and to
my delight he was willing to pose then and there for
his portrait.

I got an excellent likeness of him from the front

and then made ready for a side view. But he would

have no more. ^* Tftva," he said (that is completely

SUPERSTITIONS

finished). I tried to coax him. Would he have it
done if there were other Eskimos with him ? He
hesitated. '' Imakka " (perhaps), he said. " Then go
and fetch that group of men to stand with you."

Off he trotted, and I saw him palavering with the
men. Presently he started back ; but stopped at a
fair distance and shouted *' They cannot come : the
lady has their ghosts in her box/' pointing to a lady
who was wandering on the beach with a kodak, and
who had apparently just photographed the group.
Then he fled to his tent on the hillside !

Children do not seem to mind : you may photo-
graph them over and over again.

I had glimpses, too, in my talks with Bob and
others of the people of Killinek, of the religious
beliefs of the ancient Eskimo race as they were in
the old heathen days. The idea of a good Spirit did
not enter their minds: the Spirit of their heathen
life was ill-disposed and apt to sulk. He must be
appeased, lest he hinder their hunting and cast an
evil spell over them. It was an awfiil thing to
approach his dwelling in the hills ; only certain men
could venture, men who understood his ways and
knew how to ward off his wrath. And so the chosen
men used to go to the gloomy heights where
Torngak seemed to dwell, taking with them offerings
in order that his anger, ever ready to bubble over
and destroy them, might be quenched at least for a
time. This was the Power in whom the heathen
Eskimos believed; a mighty Ill-will, a Being of
malice and cruelty. Verily, a hopeless creed; a
pitiful thing in comparison vnth the Gospel of Love
in whose bounty they are now sharing.

Their belief in the Spirit of the Sea is less terrible ;

OLD WOMAN OF THE SEA

but, none the less, they thought that the sea, too,
was governed by an ill-disposed power. They spoke
of an old, old woman, whose home was at the
bottom of the sea. She sometimes used to come
up to breathe on the shores of Resolution Island.
All the living things that swim the seas were under
her control; the fish, the seals, the white bears,
obeyed her will. She too must be appeased. If
not, who knows but she might send a shark to break
up the nets and eat the seals that are already
entangled in the meshes! She might tell the seals
to swim away, and not go near the hunting-places of
the Innuit; she might drive the white bears north-
ward, to infest the rocks of Resolution Island, where
there are no hunters; she might feed the codfish
with her own hand, and make them lie fat and
sluggish while the fisherman plied his hook and line
in vain. So she must be appeased ; and to a deep
channel in a cleft of the rocks the heathen Eskimo
would take his broken knives, his worn-out spear-
heads, bits of meat, bones-anything was better than
nothing — and cast them into the water for the old
woman, that she might be in a good humour.

Like aU nature peoples, the heathen Eskimos
were firm believers in a life after death. Their idea
was like that of the Happy Hunting Grounds, with
the difference that the best hunting ground to
Eskimo ways] of thinking is the sea. And so they
laid the hunter on a lonely height overlooking the
sea. The grave was just an oblong pile of stones,
for the Eskimos knew nothing of digging — the only
soil on their land is the shallow layer scattered over
the hard rock. Within the pile the hunter was laid,

dressed in his best clothes ; his harpoon was placed

HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS

beside him» ready to his hand ; and flat stones were
laid across the top of his resting-place to keep the
ravaging wolves away. In a separate little heap of
stones at the head of his tomb his stone lamp and
cooking-pot were buried.

Here and there along the coast of Labrador you
may see those heathen graves, sometimes grouped
into graveyards, sometimes solitary. Look in, and
you see the mouldering bones : the harpoon is rotten,
and its wooden shaft is almost gone ; the lamp and
cooking-pot are half buried in the moss.

" Ha," the people were wont to say, " he was a
clever hunter; he is happy now; he hunts every
night. See how smooth and white his bones are.
This other was lazy, he has forgotten how to hunt ;
the moss is growing over his bones ! "

And perhaps some weird old man, with a far-
away look in his restless eyes, would s^^y **Yes, I
have seen them hunting : yes, I have seen their foot-
prints in the snow."

• . • . • .

And I turned away from Killinek content with
my visit.

I had seen a tribe of real heathen Eskimos,
among whom the Mission has only just begun its
quiet work ; I had caught a glimpse of their habits
and their ways of thinking, of their beliefs and
superstitions; and I felt that I should do well to
look again at my neighbours at Okak, and remember
what they were long years ago, and study them
again as they are to-day.

And so I invite you, my reader, to come with me

and see the people in their daily life and in their

homes ; read with me their character, as I have read

LEAVING KILLINEK

it during the years that I have lived among them
and talked and travelled and camped with them.
And if, by the pages that follow, you are aroused to
an interest m their future, and in the efforts made to
save them, body and soul, then I am content.

CHAPTER III

First Sight of Labrador — Arrival at Okak

IT was in the month of August, in the year 1902,
that I first saw Labrador; and I shall never
forget the gloom that seemed to hang over the
desolate coast on that bleak summer morning.

There was a chilling mist on the water, and
through it I could dimly see a dull and sullen
coast line, and hear the ponderous thud of the sea
as it beat, beat, beat upon the rocky wall.

It was a dispiritii^ picture ; ^d when I went
ashore and saw the stunted brushwood and the dwarfed
and twisted trees all dripping with moisture, and met
the hulking sledge-dogs, bedraggled and forlorn,
wandering in aimless fashion among the huts, the idea
of desolation was complete. But the next day brought
a different picture. The sun shone brightly on the
neat white walls of the Mission church, and on the
moss-grown huts that strewed the hillside; brisk,
black-haired little people were running to and fro,
bustling to help at the unloading of the ship ; there
was an air of life and brightness about the scene.

I caught some of the glamour of Labrador ; I saw

something of the charm of this lonely land, a charm

that in some strange fashion makes people love it, that

makes old residents who have left it pine to return,

that makes even the casual visitor vow to come again.

I walked upon the hillside in the sunshine, and

FIRST SIGHT OF LABRADOR

marvelled at the wealth of wild flowers ; they were
eveiywhere, rearing their heads among the unpro-
mising stones, and blooming in profusion amid the
thick moss that carpeted the ground. Some of them
I knew— delicate harebells, and tall foxgloves, and
humble scentless violets, and yellow dandelions — and
some were strange to me: I found when I gathered a
bunch that they soon withered : it seemed as if they
were Uving in a hurry ; springing up from the sodden,
half -frozen sprinkling of soil that barely covers the
rocks, and bursting into brilliant bloom, and withering
away, all in the space of a summer that only lasts six
or seven weeks. Surely they were making the most
of their chance of living : I had hardly thought that
the land of Labrador could look so gay. The butter-
flies were flitting to and fro ; the grasshoppers were
about, with their queer sudden leaps ; the mice and
lemmings darted under the stones, bristling and
squealing : it seemed such a summer land ! So
different can two impressions be. But it was not this
short summer visit of mine in 1902 that gave me my
real impression of Labrador. I rather think of the
autunm of 1908, when I came back to the land to
make my home at Okak, and to plant a hospital there
among the Eskimos.

I remember the tension with which we waited for
the cry of " Land 1 " and I remember with what a
mighty roar the steward woke me up, and how I
rolled over with a jerk to look through the port-
hole;

And so I saw again the bare black rocks of
Labrador, probably two or three miles away, but
seeming no more than a stone-throw. It looked

a poor bleak place, but any sort of land was welcome

FIRST SIGHT OP LABRADOR

after a journey across the Atlantic in a 222-t<»is
barque, in the teeth of what the captain rather
flatteringly called head-winds, but which turned out
to be the equinoctial gales.

I looked on the land with a strange sense of
expectancy ; and then there came to me the feeling
that has come to others, the feeling that there was
something away behind it alL It was awfully de-
pressing in itself; but to me it seemed like a veil
that might lift and disclose a vision of hope.

I know that in summer the scene is brighter —
a picture of bold cliffs and headlands ^^^ of long fiords
with rocky walls all patched with wnite and green,
where the snow lies unmelted in the shade and the
scrubby brushwood flourishes in the sunshine; of
stretches of grey moss, and splodges of vivid colour
where the wild flowers have got a hold ; of distant
heights, snow-capped, sharply focussed in the clear
air; of blue waters dancing in the sunshine — but
I like to think of Labrador as I saw it on that
October morning; bleak and silent, lapped by a
leaden sea, but giving all the time that charming
hint of something to be sought, something to live
for. All day long we steamed past bare black rocks,
and night fell upon the same grim scenery: this
was Labrador.

In the morning we were at anchor off Ramah,
in a deep little harbour among the hills. The
solitary missionary was in transports of delight. " I
had almost given you up," he said, "you are so
late " : and he went on to tell us how only the night
before he had told two men to make ready to tramp
over the hills to Hebron, seventy miles away, to ask
for news and stores.

While we were chatting, two Eskimos came in ;

Thb Sba Front at Okak

boudi. Over tbe porcbe*

th« Ivgat of ibc E^nH Tillaga, with a papuli
' liitT.fiVc ligts, piiMt el tbcsa rEipeclkblt llltlc boi

ARRIVAL AT OKAK

small shock-headed men, clad in cordm*oy trousers
and oily blanket smocks.

Their little restless eyes gazed about with won-
derment» the while they gabbled strange words with
great volubility.

As fast as one paused for breath, the other took
up the tale, and I could not help smiling at their ob-
vious earnestness about something. The missionary
sat gravely listening to their speeches, occasionally
giving a laconic '* Ahaila " (yes) ; and at the end they
seemed mightily pleased, for they went out grinnmg,
with many a sly nudge at one another, and
'' NakomSk " (thank you) to the company generally.

Then we got the explanation. "Those are the

two men that I told to go to Hebron, and they have

been to ask whether they need go, now that the ship

has come. I expect there will be feasting in Ramah

to-day, for their next question was whether they

might eat the provisions I had given them for the

journey."

It came out later in the day that one of the men

had eaten his pork and biscuits as soon as he got

them, I suppose as a sort of foundation for his

journey. Actually on the road, he would have been

content to chew an unpromising slab of tough dried

fish ; but I think he must have felt rather relieved

when the missionary gave him permission to demolish

the pork.

The ship did not dally in Ramah; we only

stayed one day, because of the lateness of the season ;

and on the morning of the 7th of November, 1908,

we dropped our anchor in Okak Bay, in sight

of the biggest of the Eskimo villages ; and there, at

the old settlement of Okak, among the dull little

49 D

ARRIVAL AT OKAK

huts that dotted the slope of the hill, and close to
the tapering tower of the Mission church, I saw my
future home.

When we went ashore there was an Eskimo wait-
ing to hand us into the boat. He stood at the bottom
of the gangway steps ; and when I looked down on
his head all the pictures that I had seen of the
Eskimos, and that had seemed unreal when face
to face with the people themselves, came back
to me.

Here was an Eskimo, black-haired and shaggy-
headed, squat and solid of figure, square shouldered
and short necked, with small active hands and feet,
perhaps a little more than five feet tall, but muscular
and heavy of build ; and when he looked up it was
a face from the picture books that looked into mine,
a square smooth face with an oily-looking yellow skin
and ruddy patches on the cheeks ; his lumpy cheek-
bones seemed well padded with fat ; his nose was a
small flat dab ; and he had a pair of restless little eyes
that peered out of narrow slits. I handed my wife
down the steps, and he helped her into the boat. His
smattering of English had a quaint ring with it:
**Take care, lady, boat plenty wet — fine day, sir,"
and I shook hands with this characteristic-looking
Eskimo, and thought that I should like to make his
closer acquaintance. My wish came true : as I look
forward over the years that I am to chronicle I see
his face many a time, sometimes smiling, sometimes
awkward, sometimes quarrelsome ; he gave me some
tough questions to answer ; he gave me many a trying
hour; he did me many a little kindness. The one
and the other were so mixed up ; he was a thoroughly

human Eskimo. Paulus and I became very good

ABJRIVAL AT OKAE

firiafids, such is my memory of him — and he saved
my life once ; hut that comes later on.

There was a keen wind hlowing as the men rowed
us across from the ship to the shore, and they had
hard work to get along. ''Aksuse" shouted the
steersman, and the rowers bent their backs and pulled
their hardest. Every time they flagged, every time
he saw a gust of wind coming, his cry was the same
— "Aksuse." Aksuse — ^be strong; it was the Eskimo
greeting, the same word that met us at Ramah when
we first touched land, the *' Aksunai " of welcome
given to several at once ; and I saw that the meaning
has not dropped out of it as it has out of some
greetings.

" Aksuse," shouted the steersman ; " be strong —
put your hearts into it — do your best," and the oars-
men obeyed with a will. What more noble greeting
could you imagine than this old Eskimo password,
the people's greeting through all time ?

*' Aksuse," shouted the folk as we walked along
the jetty, and we could not but feel heartened for
our task by the very sincerity of the welcome. One
man thought to go one better: he had a trifle of
English to air : he touched my wife's arm, and held
out his hand. ** Good evening, sir," he said !

Ten minutes later we were walking round the
new hospital. This is a matter-of-fact sort of state-
ment, and takes but a few words in the telling;
but it sums up the result of a good many months
of downright hard work.

Early in the year the missionary in charge at

Okak received word that the hospital was coming.

^* Would he please make a foundation, flfty-two feet

by thirty-six ? "

ARRIVAL AT OKAK

I think a great many people would have been
appalled at such a request as this, but we had a
practical man to deal with; he simply called the
Eskimos together and set them to work, himself
toiling as hard as any. They fetched stones from
the beach and the hillside; they sent the women
and children with boxes and buckets, to carry sand
from the patch of sandbank that peeps up at low
water ; and so they built the foundation.

I wondered, as I walked round the walls, how
the comer stones had ever been put in place. They
were enormous lumps of rock, and had been raised
fully five feet off the ground without the help of
any kind of machinery. In fkct, the whole feat
of building the foundation surprised me, for the
beach is covered with ice for nine months of the
twelve, so that the pebble gathering and sand fetching
must have been accomplished at a mitrvellous rate
for the foundation to be made, and the hospital to
be built upon it, all in the space of one short season.

I asked the missionary about those comer stones.

For answer he smiled an inscmtable smile. ^* We
had to pull all together,'' he said. It appears that
they made a tripod of heavy tree-stems, slung a
pulley from the top, passed a thick rope over the
pulley and tied it to the stone, and then got hold
of the rope, and pulled all together ! It sounded
very simple, but I looked again at those comer stones
and wished I had been there to see the pulling.

I imderstood it better during the afternoon, for

a strong wind began to blow, and the oarsmen were

unable to row the lighters ashore. The work of

unloading threatened to come to a stop, and the

captain dared not delay with the Labrador winter

At Ibe loa riahr-hand i
of bsnoc hu ponnii lab
'-dkkr'Hiblurrinn?
drim, and Tabu, Johan

ARRIVAL AT OKAK

treading on his heels. ''Ajomarpok" (it cannot be
done), said the men at the oars. ''All right/' said
the captain, " get a rope — get the women — get every-
body » and let them all pulL" As soon as the word
went round there was a stampede to the jetty:
women came rushing out of th,e huts, tying bandanna
handkerchiefs over their heads to keep their hair tidy
in the wind; children raced from house to house,
gathering their friends. ''Come and pull," was the
password.

By the time the people were ready the rope
had been tied to the lighter and passed ashore.
The mate on the ship blew his whistle; the man
in charge of the rope on the jetty waved his hand
in answer and yelled to the people. " Att6 " (get at
it), he shouted, and the people began to pull.

They tramped along the jetty, clinging to the

rope, and singing in time to the march-like beating

of their boots on the boards. "Att6, att6," they

cried when the pace began to slacken, and then

sang and tramped the faster. There was a constant

stream up one side with the rope, and down the

other side to get a fresh hold, and as fast as the

rope came ashore the man at the end was coiling

the slack into a neat pile. A jollier lot of people

I have never seen; tliey sang and tramped, and

laughed and sang again, as if they had not a care

in the world; and all the while the lighter came

steadily on, rising to the waves and breaking them

down, stopping for nothing, but riding shorewards

in. I went on board the ship to watch their work,

and fix>m the deck I could hear the sound of their

singing borne on a wind that whistied through the

ngging. This was " pulling all together," a practical

ARRIVAL AT OKAE

illustration of the old proverb, ** Where there's a wiU,
there's a way " — and that seems to be how difficulties
are overcome in Labrador.

I admired the charming simplicity of our mission-
ary at Okak ; nothing seemed to daunt him, and he
evidently thought the work of making a foundation
a very small thii^.

*' You will have to build a bridge over the brook
in the springtime/' he said, *^ the path to the hospital
is too narrow " — and there I was, face to fiice with
my first building problem, thinking to myself that
I must catch the Labrador courage and be ready
for whatever should come, and inwardly praying for
the spirit that dwelt in those first old missionaries
and that dwells in their followers to-day.

CHAPTER IV

The Frxezing of the Sea — Sealskin Clothes and Boot^—

Winter Cold — ^The Home-Comino.

ON the morning of the 10th of November the
Harmony was gone, and big and bare the
bay looked without the familiar black hull and
spidery rigging. It was impossible to avoid feeling
just a touch of the loneliness of Labrador on that
raw morning, but there was work to be done, and
the constant round of duties proved an ideal cure.
When a man is busy making and painting and
famishing a home, unpacking a two years' supply
of all imaginable necessaries, and at the same time
wrestling with a new language and making acquaint-
ance with a strange people, time cannot drag ; and
I found that the days simply melted away.

The village seemed to have suddenly emptied,
for more than half the houses were boarded up
and deserted; and I was told that the people had
gone back to their autunm seal-hunting, which they
had left when the Harrrumy came. As I took my
daily walks upon the hills the cold struck dismal
indeed* The land was all covered with hard snow,
and the beach was crusted with a coating of ice
that crackled and boomed as the tides lifted it and
left it. The sea had a queer haze hanging over
it; it looked exactly as if the water were getting
ready to boil, and the vapour was gently drifting

with the wind. '^Ah," said the people, ''the sea

THE FREEZING OF THE SEA

will soon freeze; it is smoking already. That is
always a sign that the ice will soon cover it."

Day by day I watched the "smoke," but the
wind kept the water constantly tossing, and gave
it no chance to set. It was not until the 27th of
November that a calm night came, and when I
looked out of my window at bed-time the water
had a muddy surface in the clear moonshine; and
in the morning there was ice.

It seemed strange to look over a great grey plain
instead of the white-capped waves; there seemed
to be something wanting; and it was some time
before I found out that the silence was bothering
me. We had got so used to the rustle of the tides
upon the beach, and the murmur of the waves upon
the bay, that the utter stillness was painful. I think
it was my first experience of perfect silence: even
in the quietest part of England there is always some
sound, near or distant; but as I rambled on the
hills that afternoon the feeling was quite eerie.
There was not a breath of wind; I seemed to be
alone in a frozen world ; and I felt really glad when
a dog began to yelp somewhere in the village,
perhaps a mile away, and my ears at last got some-
thing to occupy them.

All the morning the new ice was deserted ; there
were children playing near the edge, but they seemed
afraid to venture far, and nobody took any notice
of them. It was not until midday that the grown-
ups took any interest in things, and then I saw
an old man go hobbling over the beach with a stick.

With proper Eskimo dignity and dehberation

he inspected the ice and prodded it ; then he walked

on it, at first feeling his way cautiously, but soon

THE FREEZING OF THE SEA

more boldly, and came back to say " Piovok '' (it is
good). He had done his duty, which was to test
the new ice, for the people have great faith in their
old men as judges of ice and weather. As soon as
the children heard "Piovok" they gave a scream
of delight, and went racing over the bay — perhaps
freed from the shadow of a thrashing that had
hovered over them as long as the ice was dangerous
— and spent the rest of the day romping and playing
"tig" and "sledges" without a fear in the world,
and as if there were no such thing as nine or ten
fathoms of icy water under them. I took a very
short and cautious walk on the ice that first day,
but I cannot say that I enjoyed it — it was too nerve-
racking by half. The surface had a queer elastic
feel and gave way under my feet, like walking on
cushions (such was the sensation), and swayed so
horribly that I was glad to get off it. On the next
day I tried a little skating on it, and thought to
myself that nowhere in the world could there be
such a place for skating as Labrador, with its
hundreds of miles of tough grey ice and its sheltered
channels and Norway-like scenery. But I was mis-
taken about the skating. No enterprising syndicate
will ever exploit the North Atlantic Ocean as a
skating rink, for on the third day the surface was
slushy — ^the salt was working out; and on the day
after that there was a snowstorm which covered the
ice a couple of feet deep with hard waves and ridges
of snow, and not all the sweeping in the world could
have brought the skating back again.

Three days was the most of skating that ever
I got in one season all the time I was in Labrador.

With the freezing of the sea the Labrador winter

SEALSKIN CLOTHES AND BOOTS

begins, and I hope that every new comer has the
same good advice that I received jfrom my friend
the missionary — '^Be wise in time: wear Eskimo
dothes.'* I bad done my little bit of skating in my
English boots, but they had long since proved too
cold for my walks on the hills, and the change to
native clothes and boots was a welcome one. Mr.
Simon said that he would arrange things for me;
accordingly the village '^ tailor," a square-faced, brisk
little Eskimo woman, came in one day like a minia-
ture hurricane.

There was no awe, no aloofness about her — she
had made clothes for too many successive mission-
aries to feel anything but business-like ; so she stood
me up, and looked at me, and measured me with
her arms, and bolted out satisfied. ''A bit taller
than my husband, and not so fat" — ^was her com-
ment; and the outcome of it all was that after a
few days she turned up again with a big bundle,
and I found myself the possessor of a "dicky"
(blanket smock) and a complete suit of sealskins just
like those the Eskimos wear, and all for the outlay
of a modest sum in return for the good woman's
excellent needlework. Meanwhile I had got several
women to work at making boots. Their method
of measuring was much the same as Juliana the
tailors: they came in, gazed at my feet, and went
out I I was quite unable to see the sense in this,
so I laboriously made paper patterns with the aid
of the store-keeper and his stock of boots. I gave
them to the next woman who came to measure me
for boots, and she accepted them with a smile —
but the boots she made fitom them were either

too big or too small, and desperately ugly. I confess

SEALSKIN CLOTHES AND BOOTS

that I always got a decent fit when I let the women
do the work in their own way, and Juliana explained
it easily enough. "Some women,** she said, "take
up more in the sewing than others, and some are
not used to patterns. Now I will make you some
good boots"; and without pattern or measure, or
anything else beyond her bare word, away she trotted,
and in a few days brou^t me the best pair of boots
I ever had. The long and short of it is that boot-
making is an art, and the women take it seriously.

Whenever I went into an Eskimo house I found
the women and girls chewing something. I imagined
at first that they were eating, or chewing reindeer
ears (which they cut up into a sort of native chewing
gum); but no, they were softening the edges of
the boot-leather for the needle. An Eskimo boot
is made in only three pieces — ^the legging, the tongue
or instep, and the tumed-up, trough-like sole: the
bootmaker cuts them out, and hands them round to
be chewed. Eskimo teeth are made for the chewing ;
they meet edge to edge instead of overlapping as
ours do; and the chewing of the boot-leather is
woman's work from one end of life to the other.
Little children who have hardly cut their teeth,
old women who are too feeble and blind to do any-
thing else, sit mumbling and chewing; chewing on
through life until they can chew no more, or until
they have to say, as an old woman once said to me,
•* I can no longer chew : my teeth are worn away :
I am old." And so, through the (to me) mysterious
processes of measuring and chewing and sewing, I
got my Eskimo boots.

And with the freezing of the sea there begins,

too, the real Labrador cold — not the bleak, Uting

WINTER COLD

cold of autumn, when the wind blows from the east
over the freezmg sea, but the grim cold of winter.
Oddly enough, it does not feel so very cold ; it is a
dry air, coming from the trackless desert of the in-
terior of Labrador, bracing and keen, and lacking
some of the sting of the sea wind ; but night by
night my minimum thermometer sank lower, until,
towards the end of January, it could go no further,
and the indicator used to stick each night at minus
forty. It is the little things one does not think of
that show best the power of the winter cold.

One learns to watch one's neighbour's nose on the
daily walk ; lips stiffen with icicles ; hands cannot
bear to be without gloves for a moment. Our sitting-
room was rather stufly one day,' after a visit frx>m a
merry crowd of Eskimos, so I opened the window
for fresh air. In a twinkling the pictures on the
walls were covered with frost, and the plants on the
side table — my wife's own pet little hobby — drooped
their heads with one accord and died. I shut the
double window with a slam, but it was too late ; the
plants were dead, and tears began to run down the
faces of the pictures. That was my first lesson about
King Frost in his own country 1

There was a little pantry built next to our kitchen,
a tiny room with a felt padded door and a huge brick
stove, and there we stored the potatoes and eggs and
other things that must not freeze.

On the windy nights I used to make a chilly
pilgrimage at one or two o'clock to fill up the stove
and save the potatoes.

And ours was a warm house, built of boards and

fdt in alternate layers. Labrador is a cold place —

colder than folks realise. I have heard that in the

til-ill
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WINTER COLD

old days, when the houses were not so good as they
are now, the missionaries have had to take turns to
sit up all night and keep the vegetables from freezing.
It strikes me as a new light on a missionary's life :
one pictures him sitting up to comfort and reUeve the
suffering, but one does not realise that in the in-
terests of his own health in the grim land that he has
chosen to serve he must, perforce, sit up and nurse
the potatoes.

So much for the winter cold — it is a very vivid
memory to me. Early in December the Okak brook
was frozen solid, and the people, instead of fetching
water, came with hatchets and buckets and carried
away lumps of broken ice to thaw. One little girl
used to come every day with a sack on a little sledge,
and drag it home filled with the smaller bits that
other people had pushed aside : it seemed a strange
idea — ^the family's drinking water kept in a sack. As
for ourselves, we were rather more squeamish than
the Eskimos, who took no notice of the fact that the
dogs were constantly trampling their chopping-place
on the brook ; we sent a couple of men, with an iron
tank on a sledge and twenty dogs to pull it, across
the bay to the big river. They reached water by
jabbing a hole in the ice with a t6k — a sort of enor-
mous chisel with a six-foot handle — and ladled it out
with a tin mug. By February the ice on the river
was eight feet thick, and they had to make a pit with
steps up the side : one man stopped in the pit, and
ladled the water into buckets, while the other man
carried the buckets up the steps and emptied them
into the tank. So we got our water. The men
were able to bring about two hundred gallons

at a load, and they made it their duty to keep the

THE HOME-COMING

Mission house and hospital supplied all through the
winter.

Another effect of the freezing of the sea was that
the people began to make their way home to the
village. All day long some one or other was on the
watch, and the cry of " Kemmutsit" (a sledge) brought
every able-bodied person tumbling out of doors to
greet the new arrivals. Some of the travellers had
only come a mile or two, and the dogs trotted up to
their well-known homes all fresh and frisky; others
had been on the road most of the day, and their dogs
were footsore and worn out ; it was their first time
in harness after the summer and autumn of idleness,
and they panted and struggled and whined with
weariness, though a few weeks later the same dogs
would be doing sixty or seventy miles at a stretch
without any trouble.

Every new comer had the same question to
answer — " How many seals have you caught ? " That
was the measure of a man's greatness for the time
being; and it was amusing to see some of them
swaggering about because they had got twice as
many seals as last year. One man had seventy-
seven, a truly splendid catch; and this, compared
with the average of fifteen or so that usually came
his way, was enough to turn his head, and set him
bragging of his skill, and of the marvellous things
he would do with his wealth. I remember hearing
that one of his ambitions was to lay in a stock of
tinned mutton, so that he could feed on a higher
plane than his neighbours, who must, perforce, be
satisfied with seal meat.

By the middle of December the village looked

fairly busy, and instead of a mere handful of work-

THE HOMECOMING

people straggling down the various paths to the church
when the bell rang, each meeting-time brought a
bustling crowd hunying along; and instead of the
half-empty church, chill and bare, there was the
pleasant warmth of a crackling stove, and the cheer-
ful sight of scores upon scores of brown faces shining
with good feeding, and bright eyes twinkling with
pleasure. " Home for Christmas " was the uppermost
thought in everybody's mind; and day by day the
sledges came, and the excitement grew and grew,
to culminate on Christmas Eve, when the last belated
stragglers hove in sight, and when with a roar of
" Tikkiput — ^kemmutsi-i-i-t " (they are come — ^the
sledges), the ^ole population of the village went
racing over the ice to meet the last comers and
hurry them homewards. Not only boys and girls,
but staid and stolid fathers of families, mothers
with sleeping babies in their hoods, grim old grand-
mothers and ancient white-haired veterans, joined
in the rushing, shouting crowd, careering at their
best pace — ^and a remarkably fast pace, too— over
the slippery sledge track. Sometimes those last
sledges had been in difficulties on the way. I
have seen men come home with their legs encased
in ice, showing that on some treacherous place
they had slipped through into the sea, and had
only saved themselves by clutching at the sledge;
and once a sad-eyed party reached the village,
with a mother sobbing over the loss of her little
girl, who had tumbled into the black water and
been lost when the sledge gave a sudden lurch
as the ice broke under it. But "home for Christ-
mas" is the great idea: the Eskimos will run a

little risk rather than be late, though, happily, the

THE HOME-COMING

ice is firm in most years before the middle of
December.

And making ready for Christmas was the great
occupation in every household. A good deal of
decorating seemed to be going on, for the storekeeper
was evidently doing a brisk trade in wall papers, and
people were constantly coming to me for illustrated
magazines to eke out ; in fact, I found that some of
the poorer ones had their walls completely pasted over
with pages torn from various weeklies and monthlies.
I, being an Englishman, was often asked to explain
the pictures, and hard work I sometimes found it
^^ Are there really animals like these in the forests of
England ? " said one innocent old man, as he pointed
an oily and tobacco-stained thumb at a page of
political cartoons — birds and dogs and lions, adorned
with the faces of parliamentary personalities. I did
my best, but he could not see the humour in the
idea. " There is no sense in it," he said ; " if they do
not exist, why should there be pictures of them ? "

Every house had its Christmas tree, and sometimes
more than one. Big Julius, who is the proud father
of a family of plump daughters, had a tree for each of
the girls, to say nothing of a special little tree at the
foot of the grandmother's bed — ^to the huge delight of
the old lady. It is no great trouble to get a Christ-
mas tree ; it can be brought home on the top of a load
of firewood, for the spruce fir, which looks exactly
like the Christmas tree of all our picture books, is one
of the few trees that grow in Labrador. The most
northerly trees that I know on the coast are a little
forest of these firs at the head of Nappartok Bay, forty
miles north of Okak. No Eskimo thinks it a hard-
ship to run twenty miles or so with his sledge and

THE HOME-COMING

dogs to find a specially neat little tree in some
sheltered hollow of the hills : if he has not the incli-
nation to go so far afield, he probably brings home a
bmidle of spare branches and fastens them into bare
places on the tree he has chosen — because trees that
grow in exposed places have all their branches on the
south side.

In the evenings I used to hear the bandsmen
practising Christmas music. Samuel, the performer
on the tenor horn, lived in a little hut not ten yards
firom my window, and there he sat, hour after hour,
making the walls rattle with the most weird and
awfiil hootings ; and just behind us was the cooper's
house, where Solomon, the cooper's growing lad,
was taking first lessons on the comet, and setting all
the village dogs a-howling in the moonlight.

The people were home for Christmas — and home,
to the Eskimo, is his wooden house at the Mission
village.

CHAPTER V

Little John — Poor Akpik and the Custom of the People

WALKING along the winding and slippery
path that runs between the houses and the
beach, in the congenial company of my friend the
missionary, we came upon a group of men bending
over an upturned sledge. ''Hello, John/' said the
missionary.

From the middle of the group there came a gruff
little voice; it gave the proper Eskimo greeting.
** Aksunai," it said.

Have you just got home ? "

No," said liie voice, " I got home yesterday."

'' Indeed ; I didn't see you — ^mikkimut, immakka
(because you are so small, maybe)."

There was a roar of laughter at this witticism,
and out of the midst of the group a small, shock-
headed man pushed his way.

His little eyes were twinkling ¥rith merriment,
his shaggy face was beaming, and his plump little
hand was held out for a shake.

He seemed to be, enjoying the joke as well as

anybody, and he gripped my hand and wrung it, and

shouted ''Aksunai, aksunai," and laughed and

chuckled in delight I thought as I looked into his

eyes, ** Here is the smallest Eskimo that I have seen : "

most of the Eskimos are small as inches go, though

broad and bulky, but here was a veritable pigmy, a

LITTLE JOHN

well-built man with brawny muscles, but standing
but an inch or two over four feet.

That was my first meeting with little John.

A day or two later I was along the village with a
camera, when the same gruff voice hailed me from
the roof of a house.

''Hai/' it said; ''is that the thing that makes
pictures ? "

*' Yes/' said I, and looked around for the owner
of the voice.

There he was, perched upon the roof of one of the
biggest houses, armed with a hammer and a bimdle
of shingles for mending leaky places. ''Aksunai,
John," said L

*' Ahaila," answered John ; ** has it got its habits
with it?"

" Habits " (piusingit) I took to refer to the plates
which are necessary for the making of a picture, and
John's word, which means " the usual things " — as I
found later by digging into the dictionary in which
one of the old missionaries has recorded his success in
translating ideas into a form understandable to the
Eskimo mind — ^was quite a proper one under the
circumstances.

** Yes," said I, " it has still a habit unused."

John began to clamber down firom his roof.

** Can it make pictures itiside a house ? "

lUale (of course)."

Then come and make a picture in my house " ;

and he led the way among the snarling sledge dogs

that snoozed in the porch, and flung the door open

for me crying '' Itterit, itterit (go in, go in) ; Katli,

kaivoguk (we are both coming, Katli)."

John was all bustle, afraid that the camera might

LITTLE JOHN

*'open its eye" before he was ready; and whilst I

was fixing the machine among the flour barrels and

dog's harness and half-thawed seals that littered my

end of the house, John, at his end, was urging KxAli

and the children to greater speed in their hurried

tidyings-up and changing of garments. He flung off

his work-stained dicky and sat down in all the glory

of shirt sleeves, breathing hard in his excitement,

and called ** Taimak ! " (ready) before Katli had fairly

fastened her blouse or tied the baby's cap-strings.

Poor Katli was flurried, and with good cause : it is

no small thing for an Eskimo woman to be asked to

leave her domestic duties and pose for her portrait at

a moment's notice, and as the average woman attends

to her domestic duties clad only in blanket trousers

and shirt, and the duties themselves are not so much

cooking and baking — very little of either, as a matter

of fact — ^but rather the scraping of oily sealskins and

the sewing of boots, it is no matter for wonder that

Katli had a brisk few minutes of sweeping skins and

boards and pots on one side, and piling discarded

work-a-day clothes behind the little boy, where she

hoped they would be out of sight. All the same, the

picture is fairly characteristic of a modem Eskimo

home.

I could not help noticing the two clocks ticking

side by side upon the walL I asked John, ** Why do

you have two clocks that tell difierent times ? " Now

John's answer was a thoroughly Eskimo one, and

delivered with real Eskimo gravity and slowness of

utterance. " Last autumn," said John, " I did very

well at the seal hunt. I got sixty seals and seven,

and some of them were ugjuks (big seals). With so

many seals I could pay all my debts and buy many

LITTLE JOHN

things that were needful. The missionary says that
we ought to prepare for the winter, so I got a whole
barrel of flour and a sack of ship's biscuits, and we
shall always have bread or biscuits to eat with the
seal meat. There is plenty of seal meat, but ship's
biscuit makes it taste better, and I like it and the
children like it too— and Katli, too. I bought a new
coat, and I will wear it on Christmas Day; and
Eatli bought a new black dress, and the children all
have new blanket dickys for the cold weather ; and
I bought a new lamp, and it hangs over the table so
that we can read in the evenings, and I have a
bundle of wooden shingles to mend the roof, and a
pair of new iron runners for my sledge. And still
I had a little money left. I thought I should like
a new clock, and Katli said she would like a clock,
too; so we each went to the store and bought a
clock. Ahaila, the clocks don't keep quite the same
time — but it doesn't matter, for the church bell rings
for the work-people at nine and twelve and a quarter
to five, and we can always tell the proper time by
that."

And John's face was grave and earnest as he told
me the story of the clocks, and I thought to myself,
" These simple folk are just big children." And in a
sense my thought is justified; but it seems to me
that though the Eskimo is just a big child in his
outlook on the wider world beyond his little Labra-
dor, in the things of his own daily life he is a full-
grown man. In the grim task of wresting a living
from his stem surroundings the Eskimo excels ; but
apart from this purely material side of his life, there
are things in his nature — instinctive Eskimo customs

— ^that one is bound to admire. It was in John's

LITTLE JOHN

house that I caught a glimpse of one of the customs
of the people*

I happened to turn into the house to speak to
little John about some piece of work or other, and
found the family at dinner. They all began to rise
shyly from their places, but John and I are good
friends, and after a little argument they all sat down
again and allowed me to sit on a box by the wall
and do my talking while they ate. They would
have been far better pleased if I had joined them at
their food, but no amount of tasting and trying has
ever reconciled me to the fishy flavour of seal meat,
and they knew it. As John sagely remarked, " You
Kablunaks (Europeans) have different mouths from
ours."

It was a queer dinner-party. The table was
pushed into the comer, and littered as usual with
clothes and books and relics of work hastily laid
aside, and dinner was spread on the floor. ** Laying
the table for dinner" was an unheard-of thing in
John's household, though there are Eskimos who
have arrived at the dignity of knives and forks and
a table-cloth. John's family was dining in proper
Eskimo style, and on proper Eskimo food, too. The
centre of the feast was an enormous iron pot, heaped
with lumps and slabs and ribs and joints of raw seal
meat, a repulsive-looking pile, only partly thawed
and well bedewed with oil.

Round the pot the family squatted, every one,

excepting only the baby, armed with a business-like

knife. Katli had a half-moon-shaped leather knife

that she had been using for the boots ; John himself

unhitched a formidable butcher knife from his belt,

and the others had claspknives or penknives or any

POOR AKPIK

other sort of knives that they could lay hands on.

As to the dmner, they all helped themselves, cutting

off pieces or gnawing at bones, munching and

chewing and rolling the juicy meat about in their

mouths, and smacking their Ups with relish. Now

and again Katli found some specially succulent

morsel and gave it to one of the smaller children ;

and the baby which one of the visitors had in her

hood was tussling with a bone, cutting its teeth and

educating its little Eskimo palate at the same time.

There were several neighbours and friends in the

circle, and the meal proceeded briskly without much

talking. So busy were they all that perhaps I was

the only one to notice a slow, shuffling step passing

the window. The footsteps turned into the porch,

and I heard the dogs yelping as somebody cleared

them out of the way. A groping hand felt for the

latch, and the door silently opened. A voice said

" Aksuse " (be strrnig, all of you), and poor Akpik

came in, choking and coughing at the sudden warmth.

Nobody seemed to take much notice, excepting that

John gave a laconic ** Ah " in answer to the greeting,

and the circle ¥ridened to make room for the new

comer. Akpik sat down and pulled a knife out of

his belt, and I watched him pityingly as he sat

helping himself with lean and shaking fingers to the

tenderest portions of the meat. It was not long

before he was satisfied, for he was sadly listless and

weary, and with a simple ** Nakomdk " he wiped his

knife upon his trouser leg and slowly made his way

out again. Again nobody took much notice ; John

said *' Ah," and Akpik shut the door after him.

I was mystified by this strange Uttle drama, and

I suppose that I showed my wonder in my face, for

POOR AKPIK

John answered the question that was in my thoughts
just as if I had asked it.

•* We all know Akpik," he said ; ^* he is a poor
young man who cannot hunt or work for himself,
and we know that he cannot work because he is ilL
I did not invite him to come, but he is quite
welcome. Among the people, no poor man will
lack for a meal as long as there is food. It is a
custom of the people."

And John, having given his explanation, thought
no more about it ; he was following the custom of
the people, and took no credit to himself. Any
other Eskimo would have done the same.

Little John is what is known as a clever
hunter — ^that is, he always meets with more than
the average success. For this reason he is much
respected by the people, in spite of his small size.
I took the trouble to look into the cause of his
success, and found that it was partly a matter of
heredity. His father was a clever hunter in his
day. Partly it is owing to John's infinite — or very
great — capacity for taking pains. John always
catches more trout than anybody else, but he takes
a corresponding amount of trouble over his net ; he
never lets a tear stand unmended, and he is on the
watch to clear away bits of floating seaweed all day
long. He seems to hit more seals and reindeer with
his gun than most of the men, but then he leaves
nothing to chance; his gun is always clean, his
sledge is ever in repair, and, thanks to his good
Katli, his skin canoe is never leaky.

The last time I heard of little John he was

within an ace of becoming famous, but the printer

withheld his name, so he continues to live his simple

THE CUSTOM OF THE PEOPLE

life unspoilt It was in a halfpenny paper that I
read about him, for there was a little paragraph at
the bottom of the column, informing the world that
llie Labrador coast had been visited by a terrible
storm, and that two Eskimos had been rescued from
a capsized boat in an exhausted condition.

It was little John who rescued them, but the
printer did not know that. I remember that storm
very welL

It was one of those calm, dull mornings that

sometimes come, even in Labrador, when the still

and heavy air seems to bring a feeling of gloom and

apprehension with it. Some of the shrewder heads

among the Eskimos prophesied bad weather, and

when, towards noon, queer warm gusts of air came

sweeping past, even the most ordinary man could

tell that a storm was brewing. But the codfish were

biting well, and it is easy to understand that with

the end of the season so near — for it was September

already — ^the fishers wanted to make the very most

of every opportunity. The bay was dotted with

boats, from the line of rocks a hundred yards from

the solid little jetty right away to the open sea that

stretches to the foot of Cape Mugford, and in every

boat sat one or two men, jigging for codfish. They

were wearing gloves of black sealskin boot-leather

to keep the line from chafing their hands, and they

were pulling the fish out of the water as fast as

hands could work. The jigger is a bright piece of

lead shaped like a little fish, and armed with two

barbed hooks, and there was no need to do the

patient jerk-jerk-jerk of the arm that the Eskimos

will do, if need be, for hours at a stretch; no, as

they told me afterwards, " Plenty, plenty fish, dggak

THE CUSTOM OF THE PEOPLE

(codfish) try to swallow jigger before him at the
bottom — ^vcry fine."

They stayed on the water until the last possible
moment, but they are a wary folk, and as the spray
came whipping along with the rising wind they took
warning, and headed for the shore.

They were none too soon, some of them ; they
had barely time to drag their boats out of reach
of the sea before the wind was howling and the
waves were crashing furiously on the rocks.

Round the bend, just outside the mouth of the
bay, two men were sitting in their boat absorbed
in their fishing. They had misjudged the signs of
the coming gale, and it burst upon them while they
were still far from shore. They pulled and tugged
and strained at their oars, striving all they knew to
reach shelter, but it was hopeless. It takes a lot to
frighten an Eskimo fisherman ; I believe there are no
fiber boatmen in the world; but those two fellows
thought their time had come. They do not remember
much about it; all they know is that they found
themselves in the water, clinging to the keel of their
boat, and staring at each other across it. They
could not speak, for the waves were constantly
rolling the boat so as to dip first one and then the
other under the water, or crashing over and half
stunning them ; the roar of the gale was in their ears,
and they saw glimpses of the rocks slipping past as
the wind drove them towards the open sea ; without
much real hope they clung on until their poor
cramped fingers began to slip off the slimy wood ; they
made a last despairing effort to shout. Then, while
all seemed dark and misty, and the sound of the

storm was drowsy and far away, they were seized

THE CUSTOM OF THE PEOPLE

and bundled roughly into a boat, and that is as
much as they can tell. But firom Katli I gathered
that they had been drifting past a little island where
John had pitched his fishing tent He was safe
enough, sensible little man: his boat was in a
sheltered cove, and he was enjoying a pipe while
the storm thundered at the walls of his calico home.
" Jan/' said Katli, ^* nala, nala (listen) — ^inuk (a man)" ;
and John ran out in time to see the upturned boat
come drifting down. He saw the hands clutching
the keel ; he heard the faint voices hoarsely calling ;
he raced to his boat. There was no time to lose,
no time for thinking ; in another minute the wreck
would have drifted past and rescue would be out
of the question. He neither paused nor thought,
he did what lay before him ; with a rag of sail, and
a long oar stuck out astern to scull and steer, he
pushed out into the storm. He ran his boat against
the wreck, and as they raced together before the
storm he leaned over and hauled the worn-out pair
aboard, and in less time than it takes to tell he had
swept his boat between the rocks into safety,

I know little John; I have studied him from
all sides, and I know that he is a true Eskimo ; he
will not brag about that day. I tell you that, if
you ask him about it, he will take his pipe out of
his mouth and look at you with a puzzled sort of
face that seems to say, *'What do you mean? I
cannot tell you anything" — and then he will turn
to his smoking again.

And I tell you that he — aye, and many another
Eskimo — ^would do the same again, any day.

CHAPTER VI

An Eskimo Wedding — Home Life — The Eskimo Baby

ONE evening, at the close of the usual meeting
in church, the missionary announced '^ Kaupat
kattititsikarniarpok," which means " To-morrow there
will be a wedding "—literally "a tying together."
This laconic announcement was all the notice
needed, for Labrador knows no such things as
publishing of banns and formal engagements ; every-
thing was duly arranged, and I looked forward with
a good deal of interest to seeing a real Eskimo
wedding.

In the old heathen days the young man had to
buy his wife: he offered so many seals to his pro-
spective father-in-law, or rather his parents made the
offer on his behalf, and if it seemed good enough the
bargain was struck, and the delighted bridegroom
led his purchase home. Nowadays a wedding is a
solemn religious service in the presence of the
people.

Young Peter looks about him when his twentieth

birthday is past, and finds that he has rather a fancy

for Klara up the hill at Isaak's house. Perhaps

her good looks have caught his eye; perhaps he

knows that she is clever at splitting the fish and

cutting up the seal meat for drying — ^which is about

the same as saying that she is a good cook; but

almost certainly he has satisfied himself on the most

important point of all, that she is a good boot-

AN ESKIMO WEDDING

maker! If she can dress the sealskins nicely and
sew neat, water-tight boots her husband will be a
happy man, always dryshod for his hunting, never
without nice supple boots to slip on at a moment's
notice, and likely to have a few spare pairs to sell
to the schooner men, who are glad to pay a couple
of dollars a pair for really good ones. So Peter
makes up his mind on the all-important question.
He goes to the missionary and states his case; or,
if he is very bashful, his parents go with him or
even instead of him. The missionary gravely nods
his head, and sends for Klara's father and mother.
Are they inclined to let their daughter marry young
Peter ? Perhaps it is " Yes *' : they know Peter to be
a handy lad and a smart hunter, and likely to make
a good husband.

If they say " No," there is no need for Peter to
pine. He has other names on the list: Ruth or
Rebekah, or whoever it may be, will do just as
well : and if there is no just impediment to hinder
the match, a wedding is arranged, and the missionary
announces it fcH* the first convenient day.

So on that vrinter morning I hurried on with
my work, and managed to get across to church
when the bell clanged at eleven o'clock. I found
the place nearly fiiU : certainly all the women were
there, and most of the men had snatched an hour
firom their wood-cutting or had stayed at home from
their hunting so as to be in at the ceremony.

Punctually to the minute the missionary came
in from the vestry, followed by the yoimg man
and his chosen lady. The couple perched them-
selves side by side on two stools set ready in the

centre aisle, in fuU view of the people. They did

AN ESKIMO WEDDING

not seem particularly bashful; the young man
grinned rather sheepishly as he came in, but the
girl was quite at her ease firom start to finish, and
the two of them sat on their stools very solemn
and sedate. We started with a hymn and prayer ;
then came a sermon of fifteen or twenty minutes
duration, pointedly addressed to the parties on the
stools; after that the actual wedding ceremony.
It was simplicity itself; no ring, no best man, no
bridesmaids, no giving away. The missionary stood
in firont of the couple, and asked them the usual
questions; then he joined their hands and pro-
claimed them man and wife.

After a short prayer and a hymn they adjourned
to the vestry to sign the register, accompanied by
two grave-faced elders who were to act as witnesses.
That register is a curiosity; page after page of
Eskimo names in j^rawling handwriting, with here
and there, at long intervals, a couple of European
names to signalise the marriage of one of the mission-
aries. This serious and weighty matter of signing
the register took quite a time, and the village had
got back into the swing of work before the newly-
married couple came out. I watched them firom my
window. The young man plodded stolidly ahead,
stuffing tobacco into his pipe as he went, and the
bride did her best to keep up with him. She lifted
her skirt to hurry ; she planted her feet in the deep
pits her lord and master was making as he trudged .
through the soft snow; she did her best, but she
lagged.

He never turned his head. It did not seem to
strike him to offer her his arm ; the custom of they

people was for the bride to follow, and she followed. I

78 ]

HOME LIFE

How easily one might misjudge the Eskimos
from little scenes like that I He did not seem to care ?
Ay, but he cared. He proved to be a model husband,
affectionate, kind, and faithful, and a smart hunter
withal, well able to keep his little household in
proper Eskimo plenty. They had a little wooden
cabin of their own, and lived as happy as a pair of
humming birds. But in public he must be the
"boss." The eyes of the village were upon him
that morning, and he had to maintain his dignity.

1 thought to myself as I watched that couple
i tramping up the hill to their hut that the very fact
that they had a home of their own meant a great
step forward from the days of heathenism.

To have a house of his own is the ambition that
fires every young Eskimo on matrimony bent, and 1
could not help contrasting the life in our little village
of Okak with the life among the wanderers of the
north, who think nothing of crowding two or even
three families into a tiny skin tent, and whose sole
ambitions are to see good hunting and to have a
shelter from the weather.

I have known it happen in Okak that a young

fellow acting as servant or assistant to one of the

richer hunters has been absorbed into his master's

family by marrying one of the daughters, and the

young couple have been accommodated with a comer

or a room ; but when a young man's fancy has soared

as high as marriage it nearly always continues to soar

until he has a home of his own.

It may be only a mean little shack, built of rough

tree stems and floored with packing cases ; but visit

that home, and you see at once by the proud snule

on the young folks' faces that an Eskimo's house is

79 ^

HOME LIFE

his^ caotl e ; And there they live in their little wooden
hut, until mere ambition — or the number of the little
toddlers — ^prompts the young father to tack a wing
on to his house, or to pull it down and build it again
on a larger scale.

f There is never a home without children. The
/ birth-rate is high, and most mothers have a family
( of ten or twelve.

If no children are bom to a home, or if, as some-
times happens with the terribly high infant mortality
that prevails among the Eskimos, the little ones die
off as soon as they arrive, that home need not remain
childless. An Eskimo orphan never wants for foster-
parents. In so small a nation blood relationships
are close, and intermarriage has made " cousin " a
bewildering term. That means that an orphan
always has relatives of some sort willing to adopt it ;
and in the odd case of a child being stranded without
kin, as sometimes happens when people have come
to the stations from distant tribes, the hospitable
Eskimo nature comes into play, and some couple
comes forward with the offer of a home.

Adoptions are very common. Sometimes families
simply exchange a child or two ; generally somebody
wanthig a boy hands over a superfluous girl in
exchange ; but this does not always end satisfactorily.
It is all very well while the children are little, but
when they get into their teens the boy's father
sees a good useful lad working for foster-parents,
and he wants him back. The foster-parents very
naturally object : they have had the trouble and ex-
pense of rearing the boy, and are beginning to look
for some return. So the quarrel begins. Relatives

on both sides are dragged in to palaver; the head

THE ESKIMO BABY

men of the village are fetched to smooth things down
or to add comisel to the confusion ; and finally the
missionary is consulted, and the dispute is settled.

Who would not be an Eskimo baby ? The very
first nest it goes into is a charming bag of baby-rein-
deer skin, with the fur inside, soft and warm ; and
there the baby sleeps, safe from all draughts and
chills and cold toes. Hung on the wall, or propped
against the end of the bed, the bag looks like a giant
watch-pocket; indeed, one good Eskimo housewife
must have been struck by the likeness herself, for
she brought me a miniature one when I left Labrador,
and told me that it would do to keep my watch firom
getting sick with the frost.

The baby spends most of its early days asleep in
its bag, stuffed feet downwards into the hood of its
mother's sealskin or blanket dicky, but as time
passes and it begins to feel the desire to kick, it dis-
cards the pocket and nestles in the depths of the
hood, and you may see its beady and wide-awake
eyes peering over its mother's shoulder as she walks
along. Sometimes the mother tires of the weight,
and, for the sake of a rest, dumps the baby on a
snowdrift to play. "Poor little mitel" I fancy I
hear somebody saying, '* will it not catch cold ? " But
there the fat little object sits, chuckling and goo-ing
and grabbing handfuLs of snow.

I have often seen small girls playing nursemaid, I
strutting along with the big hood hanging lumpily ^
over their backs, and the long tail trailing on the
snow. They have no big hood of their own ; a girl
is not allowed to have one until she is old enough to
get married ; so the little girl who sets out to act as ,
nursemaid borrows her mother's. She would be

81 F

THE ESKIMO BABY

helpless without a hood ; to carry the child in her
arms, or to try to wheel it in a *' pram ** or drag it
on a sledge would never satisfy it ; the hood of the
woman's dicky has been the Eskimo cradle longer
than memory can tell, and the gentle shrugging of
the shoulders, or the to-and-£ro swaying of the body
which swings the hood in such a soothing fashion, are
things which come naturally to every Eskimo girL

I think that there is no more useful member of an
Eskimo household than a growing daughter; she
minds the baby while the mother attends to the seal-
skins ; she chews the leather and helps at the stitch-
ing of the boots ; she fetches water from the brook
and scrubs the floor — and in a busy time a good
many Eskimo floors are scrubbed to clear away the
traces of seals every day; she makes herself useful
about the house in countless little ways, and even
goes out fishing if there is nothing else to do ; and
yet, when they first saw her, I warrant her parents
said they wished she had been a boy! A boy is
different; he is not of much use until he is old
enough to go to the hunt; he drives off with the
sledge and dogs and fetches firewood, or helps at the
chopping, maybe, but most boys seem to spend the
greater part of their time amusing themselves. Ah,
but the boy is going to be a hunter, and there is a
glory about that: nothing else is half so great, to
Eskimo eyes, as a really clever hunter; and the
&ther who sees his boy running wild, up to all sorts
of daring pranks, and growing headstrong and self-
willed, takes but little notice: the boy is growing
up healthy and strong — some day he will be a
hunter.

How the mothers spoil their children! And

liil
■IIP

'nil
ill

111

5 :i

THE ESKIMO BABY

boys, of course, they pet and pamper far more than
^rls; the child nearly always gtfts its own way.
There is no such thing as punishment in an Eskimo
household, and very little (restraint ; and I am in-^
clined to think that some part of the high death-rat<
among the children, and especially the higher death-
rate among the little boys, is due to the laxity with^
ivhich the parents allow their children to grow up
instead of wisely restraining them.

Oh those children : the perky little rascals I

One day I was walking along the path that runs
in front of the houses, and I came upon a small boy
clambering down among the rocks and hummocks
that strewed the beach. He was a sturdy little
fellow^ and quite a baby. I judged him to be two
years old or so, certainly not more 'than three ; but
he was clad in the dignity of ridiculous little trousers,
so I must speak of him as a boy. He seemed to have
escaped from his mother, and to be making for the
beach on an adventure of his own ; and when I looked
towards the line of houses I saw a young woman
standing at one of the doors and calling to him.

** Kaigit, kaigit " (come back), she shouted.

The child took no notice at ail.

" Kaigit, emera " (come back, my son), cried the
mother.

This time the child looked round, but he went

steadily on, barking his little knees against the sharp

points, and tumbling into holes in his hurry : '' Nia,

nia," he screamed. I half expected the mother to

come and fetch him after that, for "Nia " is anything

but polite : it was the equal of a very defiant " Shan't "

that the child shouted at his mother. She took no

notice ; she was beaten, and accepted the situation

THE ESKIMO BABY

phlegmatically ; she turned back into the house to
get on with her work.

Meanwhile I was interested in the doings of the
small boy : there was some grim purpose in his little
mind, and I stayed to see the finish of the play. He
scrambled on until he came to a dog that lay sunning
itself behind a stone. Very likely it was one of his
father's sledge dogs against which he had a grievance,
for he caught it fearlessly by the scruff of the neck,
and beat it with his tiny fist The dog, great
powerful brute, could have eaten the boy whole, as
it were ; but it made no resistance, simply cowering
and whining under the little patting blows. I am
certain that the boy did not hurt it, but it is bred in
the slinking nature of the Eskimo dog that anything
in the shape of mankind is master, irrespective of
size, and so the tiniest children, masterftd little
mites, play among the dogs without any misgivings.
Having fulfilled his purpose the boy administered a
last parting smack, and started on his voyage home-
wards again, leaving the dog yelping and wheezing
with misery and terror.

I followed the little fellow to his home, and
found his mother busily brushing the snow off him,
and smiling with pride in her hardy little son. He
was fli.yh^ien t, b ut what cared she? He was
growing strong^and fearless ; some day he would be
able to drive a team of dogs and paddle a kajak, and
hunt the deer and seals and walrus ; he was a proper
Eskimo boy.

Not many days afterwards I went into the house

and found little Abraha in bed. This was a strange

sight ; it was surely not a case of illness, for there

was no mistaking the mischief that twinkled in those

THE ESKIMO BABY

bright little eyes that followed all my movements ;
but here was Abraha in bed in broad daylight, while
all the other boys — ^and babies too, for that matter
— ^were shouting and playing out of doors. I east
about for a cause of the phenomenon. ^^Ah," I
thought, '* Abraha's mother has an eye to her boy's
welfare after all: it is not all callousness; she has
the mother's instinct to care for her children."

Above the stove there stretched a string, and on
the string there hung a row of little boots and
trousers and shirt and dicky, sopping with moisture
and steaming in the warmth. So there was a limit
to the lengths to which the child might go un-
checked. " Yes," she said, " he has tumbled through
the ice and got wet through, and he must stay in
bed till his clothes are dry : I cannot let him have
his Sunday clothes, for he would spoil them —
uivdtokulluk " (the little rascal) — this last with a
smile of real motherly pride at the restless little
fellow in the bed. ^* Aksunai, Abraha," I said ; and
Abraha turned his face away with a sheepish air, and
buried himself in the bedclothes.

Many a time, as I have watched the children in

the village, I have said to myself as this or the other

little boy trotted past me, ** How like his father he is

growing I" It was partly face, for many Eskimo

chUdren are ridiculously like their parents in looks.

Partly it was clothes, for the same hand (the

mother^5) cuts and sews the clothing for the whole

household, and often the clothes of the bigger ones

descend to the smaller ones in turn, so that from one

cause or another the peculiarities in the cut of the

father's clothes reappear in the rest of the family

wardrobe. Partly it is because the grown-up folks

THE ESKIMO BABY

keep the plump limbs and rounded outlines of the
child, even when they have passed middle age. And
partly it is the inh ^rftnt t/^p denn y to imi tate, which
is strong in the Eskimos, and which the cfiUdren —
living, as they do, constantly in the presence of their
parents — have every opportunity of cultivating.
And so the little boy grows like his father ; he has
Ishe same pose, the same stride, the same lift of the
;t, the same way of holding his hands ; in fact, in
[is every manner, and especially in little mannerisms,
is his father over again.

CHAPTER VII

Choosing Names — Eskimo Childhood — Dolls — Sledges and Dogs
— Punting on the Ice — The Little Hunter — In School

IN heathen times the Eskimos had heathen names,
and rare mouthfuls of the language some of the
names were, great unwieldy strings of letters, some-
times with a meaning, appropriate or otherwise, and
sometimes without. Among the heathen people who
have lately settled at Killinek, I found a boy and a
girl both called Nippis&, and I came across a little
girl whose parents knew her by the burdensome title
of Atataksoak (grandfather) !

The Christian Eskimos who people the Labrador
coast to-day have proper baptismal names, mostly
Biblical, such as Moses, Laban, Thomas, Miriam,
Sarah, and so on. This habit of choosing Bible
names seems a very fitting one among a people
reclaimed from heathenism; it is a constant witness
and reminder of the change they profess and of the
God they serve. And I like those old Bible names
that I met among the Eskimos, for the people steer
clear of the long and difficult names, and choose
those that are simple and dignified and easy to
pronounce.

I can well imagine that the large assortment of
Samuels and Labans and Michaels and Jonathans
to be found along the coast used to lead to some
confrision, and that is the reason why the Mission

ordained some years ago that the heads of the various

CHOOSING NAMES

families should choose distinctive surnames. And I
can imagine, too, that the business of choosmg
caused a lot of deep cogitation in those Eskimo
minds, and a lot of scratching of heads and rumpling
of hair. Some men solved the difficulty by doubling
their Christian names, like Laban Laband, and
Josef Josef§ ; . others chose Eskimo words, such as
Sillit (a grindstone), which is the surname of our
Okak organist, and Kakkarsuk (a little mountain),
or Ikkiatsiak (a shirt). Some adopted the name of
their occupation, like Illiniartitsijok (the school
teacher) and Igloliorte (the house builder) — ^the
latter being a man's polite way of referring to his
work as village coffin-maker.

Others went further afield in their search. One
happy-fstced fellow invented a new word ; he called
himself Atsertat&k, ** because," he said, ** that is like
the noise that the little birds make, and we are as
happy as a family of little birds."

Some chose ordinary EngUsh names which they
had heard among the schooner folk, and spelt them
in extraordinary Eskimo ways, like Braun and Grin ;
and others honoured the missionaries by adopting
their names. One of the most dignified families in
Hebron goes by the name of *^ Mess " ; and I can only
think that here the man chose what he thought an
absolutely unique and unhackneyed Eskimo surname
from the lettering on the top of a barrel of Prime
Mess Fork standing in the passage of the Mission
house.

So the Eskimos got their surnames, and are
handing them down from the last generation to this.

The Eskimo mother is not a stay-abed person;
she is quite, ready to bring her baby to church for

CHOOSING NAMES

its christening on the third or fourth day of its life.
In fact, I have seen a mother bring her baby on the
very day of its birth, explaining her hurry by sajring
that codfish were plentiful, and her husband really
could not stay in the village any longer, but must
leave at once for the fishing camp. There is not
as a rule, much trouble about choosing a name:
some relative or other is sure to be anxious to have
an Attitsiak (namesake), and he or she is honoured
if it be possible. A few years ago one of our
numerous Abias was on the point of becoming a
grandfather, and he obtained a promise £rom his
son and daughter-in-law that the child should be
named after him. Unfortunately, as it happened,
the baby was a girl; and, to his great disappoint-
ment, the fond grandfather foimd that his own name
was unsuitable. But the young parents put their
heads together, and planned a splendid way of
overcoming the difiiculty : the old man should have
his namesake; so they called the child Sopia, the
Eskimo version of Sophia and the nearest to Abia
that a girl's name could be, and Sopia she is.

It struck me as an odd custom that a woman who
marries a widower should give her first child the name
of her husband's late wife, but so the custom often is.

If there are no relatives or friends who parti-
cularly want a namesake, there are plenty of Bible
characters whose names can be used ; and nowadays
some of the great names firom history or from public
life are to be heard in daily use among the Eskimos.

The prcmunciation is sometimes quaint, and the

names may be almost unrecognisable — Pita for

Bertha, and Edua for Edward, for example — but that

is only the way they have struck the Eskimo ear.

CHOOSING NAMES

Another characteristic custom among Eskinio
parents is that, when one of their children has died,
they will almost certainly call the next arrival by
the same name. I have even known the queer name
of Ananias handed down from boy to boy in this
way, in order, as the young parents said, that
the child's grandfather might have an Attitsiak.
<' Ananias I" I said. '^What an awful name for a
baby 1 " « Aha,'* said the father, « but it is not after
Ananias the liar, but after the good Ananias, who
gave Saul back his sight.''

I remember one young couple who were unable
to settle on a name. There were so many eligible
namesakes that they could not choose one without,
as it were, snubbing the others. They carried their
perplexity to the missionary. He, wise man, took
a safe course. " My own name is Henry," he said.
** I shall be very pleased if you will call the baby
after me; and I hope that everybody else will be
pleased, too." "Piovok" (it is good), they said;
" his name shall be Henry."

Now comes the real Eskimo touch : little Henry
failed to thrive ; he pined away as so many Eskimo
babies do, and died.

During the following year the parents were con-
soled by the birth of another boy; and without
hesitation they named him Henry after the little
Henry they had lost.

Only very few of the Eskimos have more than

one name given in baptism ; the people seem to be

well satisfied that one name is enough ; but I have

known cases where parents who have lost several

babies one after the other give the latest arrival two

names. I wondered whether away at the back of

ESKIMO CHILDHOOD

their minds they have the old superstition that two
names give the child a better chance of living.

As I sit, pen in hand, looking back over those
fascinating years in Okak, there come to my mind
pictures upon pictures of the Eskimo children at their
play ; and I think again, how true it is that the play-
time years of childhood are a preparation for the
active work of grown-up life. " The child is father
to the man" is a saying that holds true of the
£skimos even more than of most peoples. The
£skimo baby is bom to live an Eskimo life ; the boy
^vill grow up to be a hunter like his father ; the girl
^will be a mother some day, busy over the clothing
and the sealskins and the bootmaking; and the in-
herited aptitude for the ordinary work of an Eskimo
life shows itself and shapes itself in the children's
games. I have seen the girls playing at ** shop," and
the boys playing at '' rounders " with a rag ball, but
these are games that they have learnt from the mis-
sionaries' children, mere interludes in their ordinary
play.

An Eskimo girl plays at being mother, just as
girls do all the world over, and there is generally a
baby brother or sister to lend reality to the play.
The real mother does not bother much about the
baby if there are big sisters to look after it.

If there is no baby to be nursed, the girls playv
with dolls. I suppose there have been dolls among
the Eskimos from time immemorial — doUs of stone
or bone, scraped and scrubbed iato shape with hard
flint stones ; dolls of wood, with wide*eyed, staring
faces, carved after the Eskimo cast with high cheek-
bones and broad, fiat noses ; and dolls nondescript,

mere bundles of rags, or rather of sealskin scraps,

DOLLS

tied with thongs at waist and neck, and with features
only visible to the fond little make-believe mother.

But I am encroaching on the unknown things of
the Eskimo past: wood and sealskin moulder and
perish : time crumbles them to dust ; and no visible
proof of such dolls remains— excepting the inborn
skill that the Eskimos have in making and dressing
dolls.

Some of the little girls are the proud owners of
flaxen-haired dollies from the English shops, but noiost
of them are content with the native article, whittled
from a stick of firewood by a fond father ; but what-
ever sort of doll it be, the little mother dresses it in
Eskimo clothes. I have seen the chUdren sitting on
the floor, planning and chattering, cutting out clothes
for their dolls after the unchanging pattern, making
dickys and trousers with a due eye to the economy
of cloth, and learning, all unconsciously, to cut and
make the real clothes. By daytime the doll is an
Eskimo baby, poked feet first into its little mother's
hood, and marched from side to side of the hut or
among the houses in the village : and, if she does not
know that she is watched, the little girl will put on
all the serious air of motherhood, and sway her body
to and fro, hushing and humming to get the fractious
baby to sleep. At night the child undresses her
doll, and lays it to rest on a scrap of reindeer skin
spread on a toy bedstead of boards, and covers it
with a gay quilt, and leaves it to sleep while she
clambers into her own wooden bed and pulls her own
reindeer skin or patchwork counterpane over her. It
is the little girl's chief game, the serious game of
learning to be grown up.

The boys are playing the same game in their own

SLEDGES AND DOGS

way, but it always seemed to me that there is vastly

more fun and frolic in a boy's life. One of the most

fascinating relaxations of our long winter was to watch

the boys at play. Every day we could hear their

shouts as they romped and tumbled in the snow*

They rolled huge snowballs, and hollowed them out

and hid in them ; they built proper little beehive snow

huts, and joined them by tunnels under the snow ;

and, more than anything else, they sledged and slid

down the hills. There was a steep slope beside my

window, where the drifting snow had filled the bed of

the stream, and this was the great sledging-place. I

watched them with a good deal of trepidation as they

careered down on little wooden runners strapped to

their feet — ^miniature ski, whittled from a stick of

the family firewood — but I never heard of an accident.

However &st they were going they seemed able to

dodge the lumps in the path, and avoided collisions

by twisting round in a sharp curve. If they fell at

all, they always seemed to tumble into a snowdrift,

and picked themselves up and shook their shaggy

heads, and tramped up the hill again shouting with

laughter. Sometimes they tried the less exciting

forms of tobogganing, dragging out little sledges

made for one, and built after the Eskimo pattern with

the cross-pieces bound with thongs to the runners,

and bumped madly down the hill ; or a party of boys

and girls joined at one of the big travelling sledges,

yelling and laughing, and shoving one another ofi*

into the snow ; but the boys preferred their sliding

shoes.

The rush and rumble of the runners on the hard

snow was a regular feature of winter life ; and on the

dull days, when the wind roared and the snow drove

SLEDGES AND DOGS

pelting against the window panes, I quite missed the
merry noise. Sometimes there was a louder din than
usual, and this generally meant that four or five were
huddled together on a big sealskin for want of a
proper sledge, clinging to one another and roaring
with the delight of a new sensation. The sealskin
seemed to slide easily enough when the hair was
right way on, but it twisted and lurched over the
lumps in the track and ended by turning wrong way
on and spilling its passengers into a snowdrift.

I have even seen the little rascals sliding down
the hills without anything at all in the shape of a
sledge, trusting to the wearing qualities of their
sealskin clothes; and sometimes I have seen in-
dignant mothers pounce round the corner and drag
their bright-eyed urchins off to less destructive
play.

Sometimes a man's first present to his son is a toy

whip, with a lash five or six feet long, and children

hardly out of their babyhood crawl about the floor

shouting at imaginary dogs and dealing vicious

smacks at them. Out of doors the boys play with

full-sized whips, and it is marvellous to see how

cleverly the little fellows wield the thirty feet of

lash. They set an empty tin on a hummock of ice

and flick it off time after time from the Aill length of

the whip ; or two of them wage a hot battle, each

trying to entangle the other's lash. But whips are

only accessories to the great game of sledge-driving,

and an Eskimo boy's most constant plaything is —

the dog. The men always hand the puppy dogs

over to the boys ; it is a training for both boy and

dog, for the boy uses all the tricks and mannerisms

that he has seen his father use in driving the big sledge,

SLEDGES AND DOGS

and the unwilling puppy is compelled to make a
trial of harness.

If there is a little sledge to be had, so much the
better; the boy can sit upon it and enjoy all the
delights of real travelling ; if he has no sledge, he
harnesses the pup to a block of ice, which does very
well for a makeshift. These boys are wonderfuUy
keen teachers; they have all the thoroughness of
the trained Eskimo hunter ; and only one who has
tried to drive a team of Eskimo dogs can know what
a stock of patience and perseverance the child must
have to teach the puppy to keep its trace tight and
to know and obey the words of command. Most of
the boys are wise enough to train one'^puppy at a time ;
but I once saw a big hulking lad trying to teach
a team of three, and naturally enough the three were
hardly ever all on their legs at the same time.
While one lay down to whine and whistle the others
would wander off in opposite directions to the extent
of their traces, and, finding themselves fast, they too
would lie down and whistle just as the boy had per-
suaded the other to move on. The experiment was
not a success, for after a time the lad got angry, and
there seemed to be more temper than teaching in the
thrashing he gave those poor pups. Of course every
boy's ambition is to drive full-grown dogs, but when
that day comes his playtime is over, for he must be
off with the sledge to fetch firewood or seals. For
sheer merriment there is nothing to beat the sledge-
game without dogs, when six or seven of the boys
slip the harness on their own shoulders and race away
with the sledge, wheeling this way and that at the
conunand of their driver. They enter most heartily

into the fun, crossing from one place to another in

PUNTING ON THE ICE

the team, just as dogs do, snapping and yelping and
whining and tugging to be on the move every time
the driver calls a halt

Whatever game it be, you may be sure that
they are playing it thoroughly, even though it be
only the mischievous game of walking in the water
and getting their boots wet. Mothers and £athers
only wink at these water*pranks ; the boys are
growing strong and hardy, and that is a great thing
for a hunter ; and, after all, their mischief is never
malicious.

Springtime provides the most exciting game of
the whole year, when the ice breaks, and the tides
that come oozing up the beach bring great pans and
little fiat pieces floating shorewards.

A floatmg piece of ice makes a splendid raft, to
Eskimo ways of thinking, and I have seen crowds of
our Okak boys standing in ones and twos on these
very unstable punts, and moving along by paddling
with their hands in the water or prodding at the
bottom with poles. The favourite idea is to put a
boy on a big ice-pan and shove him away into deep
water, and then, after leaving him helpless for a suit-
able time, to scramble and pole along to rescue him.
Sometimes a dog is pressed into service to play this
Robinson Crusoe sort of r6le ; but the dog generally
considers itself in real danger, and does not wait for a
formal rescue ; on the contrary, it takes matters into
its own hands (or paws), and after a time of terrified
whining slips miserably into the water and swims
ashore.

I watched one bold spirit among the boys who
had found a long and narrow piece of ice that struck
him as a suitable kajak. He tried hard to stand on

•tO

PUNTING ON THE ICE

it, but it was too wobbly, and time after time he
only just escaped a ducking by great agility ; at last
he squatted on it tailorwise, balancing himself with
his long two-handed ** pautik " (paddle), and steered to
and firo among the floating ice with all the skill and
grace of the practised kajak man.

After the ice has broken and gone, the Eskimo
boy becomes a sailor. He borrows a boat, and
hoists the sail, and fares forth before the wind for
the sheer joy of beating back against it. It some-
times seemed a reckless game, for I have seen little
fellows of six and seven, with a calico dicky hoisted
on an oar to catch the wind, tacking to and fro
against a breeze that made the little boat heel over
on its side ; but they are knowing fellows, and very
rarely come to grief in spite of their daring.

The mastery of a boat seems to be another of
their inborn gifts ; indeed, one of our very occasional
visitors at Okak told me that among the many
people he had seen he had never met with boatmen
to excel the Eskimos.

If the wind drops, the boys use the oars, and use

them strongly, too: it seems hardly believable, but

mere babies have the knack of rowing. Little

Abraha, next door to us, was often on the water

by himself before he was three, standing up because

his legs were too short for him to get a grip if he

sat, and tugging away at the pair of little oars. It

is strange to me that these children do not learn to

swim ; they are on the water every day throughout

the sumnur, and dabbling in it when they are not

on it, andryet only a few can swim a stroke. It

is the only way in which their childish energy seems

wasted, though probably swimming does not strike

97 o

THE LITTLE HUNTER

the Eskimo as a neoessaiy accomplishment. In all
their games the children are training hand and eye,
and learning things that will be useful some day:
and, above all, the Eskimo boy likes to feel himself
a hunter.

He makes a crossbow out of any bit of wood
that he can find — a stare of the family flour barrel
answers remarkably well — and goes out to shoot
birds. His weapon is not a formidable one, and he
does very little destruction; but, sometimes, when
the tame Uttle snow buntings are fluttering about,
gathering for their flitting in the late autumn or
just arriving in the early spring, the little crossbow
answers well to the steady little hand and keen
^e, and, though it seems cruel to think of it, the
Eskimos have little birds for dinner. Bojts of
thirteen or fourteen go up the valleys with real
guns, hunting hares and ptarmigan; but this is
serious work, for powder and shot are too precious
to be wasted on mere play.

A boy came to our door one day, and asked for

an empty meat-tin. A few minutes later I saw a

lot of them with harpoons, enjoying an imaginary

seal hunt with the meat tin for quarry. They had

flung it into a big pool left by the tide, and were

taking turns at spearing it. They flung their heavy

harpoons, and splashed through the water to fetch

them, amid a chorus of triumph or derision according

to their skilL Some of them were able to '< kiU "

the tin every time, but the smaller ones found the

harpoon too heavy; the inborn skill was there, for

one little fellow had a toy spear of his own, and

was flinging it like a thorough artisL

So these little hunters leain to be men. It has

IN SCHOOL

been the same ever since the Eskimos were known ;
far back in the old heathen days it was the same ;
the child was a prospective hunter. As I wandered
on the headlands that jut into the sea from the
heights of Okak Island I found many an old heathen
grave, with the mouldering weapons and the moss-
grown pots laid beside the mouldering bones; and
I foimd the children's graves among the rest, with
the tiny toy lamp and cooking-pot and the toy
harpoon placed beside the child when they laid
him away in his heap of stones above the frozen
soil.

And to-day» when the Eskimos are a Christian
nation, touched by the finger of civilisation, the
children, boys and girls, are spending their playtime
in fitting themselves for the hard life that is their
heritage.

But nowadays life is not all play, though it be
playing at work. During the months of winter,
when the people are grouped at the Mission stations,
there are r^fular sdiool hours for the children. I
walked in one day at Okak when Benjamin was
drilling arithmetic into the heads of a score of
bright-eyed little Eskimos, and the picture of that
Eskimo school class is one of the most vivid of my
many pictures of Labrador life.

''What is four times four?'' said Benjamin.

The little eyes stared, and the little mouths opened,

and the little fingers began to count under the

shadow of the desk. Benjamin made it easier.

'* I saw four sledges," he said. There was a general

heave of interest : Benjamin was going to tell them

a story. They shuffled their feet and elbows, and

settled down to listen. ''I saw four sledges: they

IN SCHOOL

were coining round the bend from the sealing-place.
Each sledge had four dogs to pull it. How many
dogs were there, gathered all together ? "

That made thinking easy; the little brains had
got something familiar to work upon; there was
a picture of sledges in their minds, and like a flash
came the answer, *^ Sixteen dogs — ^they are sixteen."
'* Yes," said Benjamin, ^^ four times four makes six-
teen; don't forget." The little faces were serious
again: it was not much of a story, after all; but
they had learnt something without expecting it.
Wise man, Benjamin; he was an Eskimo child
himself once, and has had a careful training from
the missionaries; he has leamt to present things
in a way that the Eskimo mind can grasp. After
a few more exercises with the table-book I saw
the little eyes becoming restless; thoughts were
beginning to wander; and Benjamin called for a
change. Shock-headed little Moses fetched the
books out of the cupboard, and handed them round,
and the chubby faces brightened again.

Benjamin annoimced a psalm, and the little
fingers grew busy as they turned the pages; and
then I saw first one boy and then another stand
up to spell through a verse. It was really wonderful
to watch the eager way in which they pursued the
alarming strings of letters that stretched from margin
to margin, and gathered them into syllables under
Benjamin's guidance, and made out the proper
meaning. When the psalm was finished Moses
collected the books ; then the children sang a hymn
and ran out to romp in the snow.

100

CHAPTER VIII

Birthdays — ^A Hard-working People — Joshua the Ivory-
Carver — Clothing and Cleanliness — Old Age

ONE little family custom that has gained a finn
place in the hearts of the Eskimos is the cele-
bration of birthdays.

This appeals to their sense of the picturesque,
and a birthday is never allowed to slip by without
some little attempt at marking the day. What the
number of years may be makes no difference ; elderly
folks are just as fond as the children of the tokens
that make the day a special one ; and Eskimos are
not people who are shy of letting their ages be
known ; indeed, a fiftieth birthday is a time of special
jubilation.

Many a time I have gone into houses and found
decorations of moss and green leaves, or coloured
paper when there are no leaves, fastened upon the
walls, and as likely as not the number of the person's
years worked in moss or wool and hung up like a
wreath for all to admire ; and I have shaken hands
with men and women — aye, and babies too, for the
babies must be noticed — and have said, *^ Your birth-
day, eh ? how many years are you ? " which is the very
height of Eskimo politeness. Friends go running
into the house to offer good wishes; there is food
for those who care to eat — seal meat or codfish for
certain, and maybe a hunk of home-made dough

plentifully besprinkled with currants.

101

BIRTHDAYS

They are great times, these birthdays ; but there
is nothing riotous about them. The dances and
orgies of heathen days are forgotten, and instead you
may hear the sound of smging. Many a tune have
I passed along the village in the dark of the evening
and have heard the charming sound from some little
hut ; the old familiar hymn tunes sound very sweet
in the loneliness of Labrador. First one voice, then
another, rises above the balanced harmony; and I
have stood listening, with a queer lump in my throat,
as verse followed verse and hymn followed hymn;
and I have known that this was the family gathering
that brings the Eskimo birthday to a dose.

There is much that is pleasant in the memory of
life among these Eskimo hunters. In spite of tJieir
thoughtlessness, their sometimes unreasonable de-
mands, their excitability, their proneness to quarrel,
in spite of their repulsive habits, and the occasional
glimpses that I got of their native distrust of people
from other lands, there is a warm spot in my heart
for the Eskimos. In my memory of them the good
qualities overbalance the bad. But in spite of the
fascination of hfe in Labrador, I do my utmost in
this book to write of the Eskimos exactly as I found
them, and I believe my picture of them to be a plain
and unvarnished one.

One of the most winning things about the
Eskimos is their very simplicity; so simple and
direct they are that at times they can be too con-
fiding* They speak slowly, and seem to weigh their
words. On the other hand, they have the gift of
graphic and fluent speech, and can describe their
doings with thrilling gestiures and telling emphasis

when they choose. But they must get warmed to

102

BIRTHDAYS

their subject; a mere question will not set them

going. I thought that tiiey must have a great fund

of anecdote and adventure ; and so they have, if they

only knew it. I imagined that a question would

start the hunter on a long recital of hairbreadth

escapes and thrilling races after runaway dogs, of

fights with polar bears, and lonely nights among the

wolves in the woods. But no ; these adventures and

escapes are commonplace to them ; so much a part

of the Eskimo life that they are passed over as too

trivial to notice. I heard from an old missionary

that Abia, my next-door neighbour, had been in his

youth the strongest man in Okak, strong enough to

kill a dog with a single blow of the whip from the

full length of the thirty-feet lash. And I used to

put leading questions to Abia, such as — ** I suppose

you sometimes met bears when you went to your

fox-traps ? " or " You were a very great hunter, were

you not ? " but Abia's mind was on the present ; he

had no room in it for reminiscences ; and he would

say, ** Yes, I used to be a great hunter, but I cannot

hunt now, I am old. My son Samuel can hunt, and

he is now gone after seals. I have been chopping

firewood to-day."

And they can talk furiously. They are very

excitable, and fly into a passion over a trifle.

But though they are quickly aroused, they are

just as easily appeased. A man may be in a terrible

temper, and with his wild eyes and tumbled hair and

waving arms make a very threatening picture as he

jabbers and shouts ; but a few minutes afterwards he

is friendly and smiling again, bearing no malice.

I heard very little of family feuds or long-drawn

quarrels while I was among the Eskimos: the

108

A HARD-WORKING PEOPLE

nearest to any such thing was the case where a man,
long years before, had stolen an axe from another
man's house, and the descendants of these two men
used to remind each other of the episode whenever
they happened to have a quarrel in hand. When
they do quarrel it is next to impossible to avoid
hearing them, for they stand out of doors, pouring
forth voluble streams of grammatical language by
turns, at the top of their voices. The horrible old
heathen blood-feuds have gone, and a peaceful and
friendly tone, both among themselves and towards
strangers, is one of the characteristics of the Eskimo
people to-day.

There is just a little reserve with strangers, but I
found as I went in and out among them that their
shyness wore off, and I was able to watch them at
their work and learn their characteristic ways. I
was rather surprised at first to find so many of the
men asleep in the daytime ; and when I went into a
hut and saw the father of the family, a lusty middle-
aged Eskimo hunter, sprawling snoring over a box,
or curled up on the bed or the floor, I could not
help thinking him a lazy fellow. This is the usual
first impression. But I know that the Eskimo is a
hard-working man : if he is asleep in the daytime he
has earned his rest by trudging through the soft
snow of the woods to his fox-traps, or driving his
dogs to fetch seals.

The Eskimos are a hard-working people, but

they have their lazy side: they are apt to dawdle

over work to which they are not accustomed. I had

to employ a good many men at carpentering and

building, and I found that they needed almost

constant supervision if the work was to go ahead

104

A HARDWORKING PEOPLE

with any speed. Even with supervision the work
came foreign to their nature, and more than once on
fine mornings the workmen failed to turn up, and I
learnt later in the day that they had been tempted
by the beautiful weather or by a report of seals in the
bay, and had gone for a change in the form of a day's
hunting. Women scrape sealskins or sew boots from
morning till night ; but set them to pile the firewood
to dry on the hillside, and they sit and chatter, or
even, some of them, fSEdl asleep, unless you keep an eye
upon them. But I could never call the Eskimos lazy
after seeing them trot forty miles or more in a day, or
sit rowing for twenty-four hours at a stretch, or work
like Trojans the whole day through to let the Mission
ship catch a favourable tide for sailing.

No, my impression of them is that they are a
hard-working people On stormy days the men sit
at home, smoking and talking; they make nets or
plait strips of walrus hide into dog- whips, or do any
bits of work that may be necessary ; they may even
be busy carving ivory. If there is no work to be
done, they sprawl and chat and smoke and slumber.

Ivory carving is practically a lost art among the
Eskimos. For one thing, walrus tusks are too scarce
since the walruses have been scared] away northward,
and the people need all they can get for the making
of harpoon heads; for another thing, time is too
precious nowadays, and there is not a good enough
market for the quaint little figures of men and
sledges and birds, and all the animals that an Eskimo
knows ; so it comes about that the modem Eskimo
young man does not bother to learn ivory carving.

There is a little figure standing on my table as I

write, a tiny white bird, and it carries me back to the

106

JOSHUA THE IVORY-CARVER

day when I ^rst landed at Okak. It was Joshua
who brought it ; a short, squat figure of a man, with
a great mop of coarse black hair and a shaggy black
beard — Joshua Nujaliak (the bearded one), called after
his beard because beards are a rarity among the
Eskimos, better known as Joshua the Ivory-carver«
That little bird was Joshua's ** meeting present " : he
gave it the name himself, and, although I have heard
of parting presents, this was the first meeting present
in the course of my experience. ^* Meeting present,"
said Joshua; *^me come say hew-de-do"; and
though my knowledge of the language was at that
time limited to the single word of greeting
''Aksunai," Joshua's smattering of English helped
the hour along famously.

He described his carving work to me, mostly
in dumb show, making jags in the air with his arm
to represent a saw, and rubbini; the imaginary work
with \ stumpy fioger. to thTicompZS of .
grating noise in his throat, which, 1 suppose, meant
the file.

** No plenty aivek (walrus)," he said, holding two
fingers to his mouth to represent the tusks, so that I
might not misunderstand him ; ** all gone bye'm bye
— ^no more tusks to carve."

Poor Joshua did not live to see many more
aiveks ; he died in the big influenza epidemic of 1904.
My last meeting with him before I saw him on his
deathbed was in July, when a schooner, bound for
Hebron, ran into Okak Bay to find a pilot.

After a little cogitation Joshua was chosen ; he

knew the way along the coast, and he knew enough

English to make his meaning plain ; so off he went

to get ready. Half-an-hour later I watched him

106

JOSHUA THE IVORY-CARVER

stalk majestically down the jetty, clad in all his

finery. I do not mean that he had donned his

sealskin boots and trousers, and the special white

''dicky" that he kept for church; no, the office

of pilot appealed to him as demanding something

extraordinarily fine, and so he marched proudly

aloD£^, dad [in hob-nailed boots and striped trousers,

with a big flapping frock coat hanging loosely from

his shoulders, and his long black hair crowned by

an ancient chimney-pot hat.

Under ordinary circumstances he would instinc-

tively have seized an oar; but on this splendid

occasion he sat bolt upright in the stem of the boat,

occasionally clutching at his beloved hat lest the

gusts of wind should snatch it fi*om him, and allowed

the schooner's crew to take him on board.

Good-hearted, simple-minded Joshua, he did the

piloting all right ; but he took to his bed soon after

he got home, and we had to bid him good-bye.

I lost a good friend when Joshua died ; and Labrador

lost the best of the old Eskimo ivory-carvers.

The art is passing ; from lack of tusks and the

call of the hunt less and less time is given to this

interestmg pursuit, and every year sees fewer and

fewer of the quaint little figures sent home for sale :

the native skill is there, and only needs rousing, as I

have proved by getting some carvings done in wood

and soft stone.

No matter at what time of the day I went into the

Eskimo houses, the women always seemed to be busy

with the sealskins ; but, for some of them at least,

there are times when they put the skins aside and

ply their needles on softer stuff ; and they turn out

some very neat and pretty embroidery to ornament

107

CLOTHING AND CLEANLINESS

their Sunday dickjrs. Their taste lies in the direc-
tion of brilliant colours and startling mixtures ; and
I was amused to find that Deborah, our best needle*
woman at Okak, had mixed a few glaring pink flowers
among the delicate pattern that she was working in
art shades of green and brown at the order of an
English visitor.

Deborah thought that the pattern was vastly
improved by these vivid dabs of pink ; and, after all,
the result of her quaint ideas was characteristically
Eskimo.

Whatever work they may be doing in their homes,

it is quite likely that the women have discarded their

skirts, and are clothed in blanket trousers, as the old

style was. It struck me as a sensible sort of dress

for them, better suited to the work they have to do

than skirts which get draggled and oil-stained ; and

yet, I suppose, the reason that they so seldom appear

m pubUc in their trousers is that they are afraid of

being laughed at. Probably shyness has led to their

adoption of the skirt, for they are far more conmion

at the southern stations, which touch the fringe of

civilization, than at Okak and the villages further

north, where there are still women who go about

their daily work in trousers. I had no difficulty in

persuading them to be photographed in their national

dress ; they are, in their inmost hearts, proud of it,

and save a specially fine outfit for festival days in

church. When I went to take a picture of old Ruth

I had the good fortune to get a snapshot of another

old Eskimo habit. Ruth was highly flattered at the

idea of a photograph, and became quite excited about

it ; in fact, her face was perspiring so with the fluster

into which she had worked herself, that before doffing

108

CLOTHING AND CLEANLINESS

her skirt for the picture she wiped her face — and
pocketed her handkerchief in her boot. That is the
Eskimo pocket 1 Big parcels go into the hood,
alon^ with the baby ; but the woman's boot is the
hiding-place for all her smaller treasures. I have
seen hymn-books, biscuits, pipes, bits of bead- work or
sealskin pockets for sale, wools, rolls of cloth, money
— ^all sorts of things, stuffed into the convenient wide
leg of the boot.

It is no easy matter to write so as to give an
adequate idea of the stage at which the Christian
Eskimos have arrived in the things of cleanliness.
The heathen were dirty by choice ; or rather, they
Tvere dirty because they knew no better, and because
they were content to remain so. Things have
changed since heathen days ; lessons have been
taught ; and my life in Okak gave me some small hint
of the difficulties and the prejudice that the old pioneer
missionaries had to face in making a beginning.

There is now a foundation to build on; the
children of to-day are bom of parents who have
learnt some of the lessons ; they have from their birth
some of the ambition to be neat and clean which is
so clear a mark of civilisation. I cannot hold the
^Eskimos up as a cleanly race ; they have an immense
amount to leam; they are still far behind true
civilisation in habits of cleanliness and sanitation ;
but this I can say, they are far, far ahead of their
heathen brothers.

It may, I think, be fairly said of the Eskimos to-
day that they keep themselves and their clothes re-
markably clean considering the nature of their work.
In the north, where no trees grow, and seal-oil lamps

provide light and a meagre tinge of warmth for the

109

CLOTHING AND CLEANLINESS

huts, the people look dirty. The huts are small, and
all the work of skinning and dressing the seals must
be done in them because out-of-doors ever^rthing
freezes as hard as stone; and so the work-a-day
clothes are black and shiny with oiL But by eveiy
bedside there stands a box, and in that box is a dean
outfit for Sunday use. I can imagine that that was
the beginning of the lesson in the hands of those old
missionaries : ** Come to the House of God neat and
clean " ; and if any proof were needed of the truth
of my idea, it could be found in the person of a num
who died at Nain some three or four years ago. The
poor fellow was deaf and dumb from birth, and had
learnt to talk in signs; and his way of saying
*• Sunday '* was to rub his hands over his fiice — " The
day on which he washed his face " I

I found the people using soap and water fairly
often, and taking a good deal of pride in their appear-
ance ; in fact, the women and girls are very fSftstidious
indeed about their hair, and wash and comb it with
real feminine pride. As for the washing of clothes,
that they do in their own way. They wet them and
soap them, and then drop them into the brook and
trample on them ; and there they used to stand, in
a pool in the brook just outside my window, tramp-
lii^ in the shallow water, singing and talking to pass
the time, and, alas, puffing at their pipes.

It seems strange that the Eskimos should be

addicted to so essentially an Indian habit as smoking.

How did they learn it, and when? Was it the

" pipe of peace," after one of their old quarrels, that

started the craving ? Or did they first get it from

passing vessels? Perhaps so; but who can tell?

Eskimos and Indians are hereditary foes ; even in my

110

■ddlin'lu

Ah Eskimo Woman Scrafim

:htd net 1 board in ■ lub and ihc won

OLD AGE

time I have seen Eskimos scared at the mention of
'^ Indian," and when I travelled southward my drivers
once asked me in awestruck voices, ** Shall we see the
AUat" (Indians)?

However it be, there it is ; the Eskimos smoke.
Men and women alike — ^aye, and unless my eyes have
deceived me, children too, in a furtive way — ^all puff
with real relish ; though happily the women are shy
of allowing themselves to be seen with the pipe
between their teeth.

In my visits to the Eskimo households I could
not fSEul to be struck by the patience and devotion
with which the people care for their aged ones. The
old man or woman, feeble and past work, is sure of
a home with a married son or daughter or other
relative, and if the poor old body has no relations,
there is enough hospitality in the hearts of the
poorest of the people to make them open their
homes to the needy.

I found age a very deceptive thing. " Sixty-two **
might be the answer from a bowed old %ure crouch-
ing over the stove — I would have guessed twenty /
years more than that. The fact is that the Eskimo /
wears out fast ; after fifty he begins to decline, and |
few live long after sixty. I have known a few over if
seventy, and the people told me with wonderment
about an old woman who lived to be eighty-two,
and who worked to the last ; but these are great
rarities, and it must be a unique thing in one's
lifetime to meet with an Eskimo great-grandmother.
These very old people nearly always seem to be
active to the last; they have an unusual store of
vitality ; and they die in harness, dropping out like

those who are too tired to go any further, and passing

111

OLD AGE

away without illness or suffering. They are
always those who have clung the most closely to
their own native foods, and can always speak of
having been mighty hunters once upon a time.

Their activity and endurance are remarkable*
Women who are too old and toothless to chew^
the boot-leather can still scrape the sealskins,
perhaps with a skill that the younger women lack :
if they are too blind and feeble to scrape, they can
sit behind a wall of snow upon the sea-ice, and jig
for the sleepy rock-cod through a hole. ''Are you
cold?" I asked old Klara. She laughed in her
shrill old way : '' I am an Eskimo/' she said. Old
Abia, my white-haired neighbour from the hut under
the shadow of the hospital wall, was a most energetic
old fellow. He used to make me anxious for
his safety. One morning I saw him go off over
the ice, dragging a small sledge. I thought he
had gone to gather sticks along the sledge track,
and that he would be home in a couple of hours.
He was not at the evening meeting, however, and
a meeting in church was a thing that he never
missed.

I searched for his white head among the rows
of black ones, but he was not there. His son
Samuel was in the choir all right ; I could hear his
powerful tenor when we sang ; so I waited for him
after the meeting and asked '^Abia, nanneki?"
(where is Abia ?).

A-a-tsuk " (I don't know), answered Samuel.

'* Where did he go this morning ? "

^* A-a-tsuk."

^* Had we not better go and look for him ? "

'* A-a-tsuk," said Samuel, with a grin ; ** kujanna

112

OLD AGE

(never mind) — the old man is all right — he is an
Eskimo ! ''

Then Samuel went home to bed.

Old Abia tm*ned up smiling the next afternoon,
dragging a sledge-load of trout behind him. He had
suddenly bethought himself of a lake among the
hilLs where he used to catch trout. He walked the
ten miles to the frozen lake; jabbed a hole in the
ice with his ** t6k " (square-headed spear) ; and then
crouched over the hole dangling a bit of red wool
in the water, and spearing the trout with his
'< kakkivak " (trout-spear) as fast as they came within
reach. Before he was satisfied night had fallen, so
this hardy old Eskimo of sixty-nine lay down to
sleep in the open. He woke up fresh and happy
in the morning, and after another turn at trout-
spearing he dragged his load home — and thought
nothing about it !

113

CHAPTER IX

ACakino a Slkdgb — ^My Fibst Slbdoe Journey

AS soon as the winter was Mdy established I
x\. ^^^^g^^ to think of visiting some of the other
stations by sledge. With this idea in mind I
consulted Jerry and Julius, the two men who made
it their business to fetch our drinking water, and
asked them about a sledge. There was a respectable-
looking sledge about the premises, a year or two old,
maybe, but good enough for us to take on our
occasional trips about the bay, and I asked the men
whether this would do for a trip to Hebron.

They were unanimous and very emphatic.
^* Piungito&rluk " (it is awfully bad), they said, and
besought me to let them make me a good sledge.
" Very well," I told them, ** you shall make me a good
sledge, and I will take you with me to Hebron."
They were delighted, beaming and chuckling with
glee, and could hardly be persuaded to finish filling
the water tanks, so eager were they to be at work on
the new sledge. They were prepared to take the
whole thing in hand, from start to finish, and next
morning were off to the woods at daybreak in search
of a big, straight tree for the runners. I happened to
tell the storekeeper about their objections to the old
sledge, and he, being a man well used to the ways of
the Eskimos, smiled rather broadly. ** The sledge is
not so bad," he said ; '' our postman carried the mails

to Nain with it last week; but the postman made

114

MAKING A SLEDGE

that sledge, and your water-men did not* That
makes a good deal of difference."

" Just so," I thoi^ht ; " the Eskimos are like every-
body else : every man likes his own handiwork the
best!"

In the dark of the evening Jerry and Julius came
home from the woods, helping the dogs to haul an
enormous tree stem. I was astonished that such a
big tree was to be found in Labrador ; but the men
only smiled. They had been a good many miles
that day, struggling through the soft snow of a
sheltered valley that they knew, where the trees are
shielded from the winds and have managed, in the
course of centuries, to reach a useful size.

I think I am right in writing of " centuries " in
the life of those trees ; for the superintendent of the
mission. Bishop Martin of Nain, planted a seedling
fir to celebrate the birth of his first son ; and when I
saw the tree where it stands in a sheltered nook on
the hillside at Nain, it was knee high — and that was
soon after the young man's twenty-first birthday I

Jerry and Julius got one advantage from using
Labrador wood for my sledge ; it needed no season-
ing. " Ay," they said, " there is no wood for sledges
like the Labrador wood; and that is why the
Avan^miut (northerners) send to Okak for their
sledge wood."

Next morning I foimd them sawing the tree into

planks; Jerry, being the more learned man, was

pkying top-sawyer and guidmg the saw, while

Julius stood imdemeath and knotted his great

muscles with the power of his pulling. They had a

workshop all ready close at hand; it consisted of

two big blocks of frozen snow set about six feet

116

MAKING A SLEDGE

apart, and on these they laid the planks to be shaped
and smoothed. I offered them the use of the
carpenter's bench in the hospital, but they declined
the offer with scorn. They were better used to
their open-air work-bench, and seemed to use the
tools quite well with their hands cased in thick
sealskin gloves; at all events, the sledge-making
went on apace, and each time I went out I found
them a little further on with it. All the men who
had' any time to spare were clustered round to
watch, and, no doubt, to keep up a constant fire of
comments; but the chatter was always good-
humoured, and the men seemed to get on the faster
for it. As my sledge grew under their hands, I
found that they were making it sixteen feet long,
and two and a half feet broad. It had twenty-six
cross-pieces, and never a nail did they use. ** KappS,"
they said, '' nails no good : plenty soon break : seal-
hide anan&k.'' They set the runners on the blocks,
and bored holes for the binding : then stood them up
a couple of feet apart and bound the cross-pieces to
them, first the fix>nt and back ones, then the middle
one, and then the others to fill up the spaces. There
was a gentle upward curve from back to front — to
make the sledge rise better to the snowdrifts, they
said ; and the runners were not set quite upright, but
splayed slightly outwards — ^to keep the sledge from
slipping sideways; and every bit of the work was
done with a neatness and exactness that the most
skilled of carpenters might envy. Jerry and Julius
may have thought that their sledge was the best
ever made, but there are frilly a score of men in
Okak who can build a sledge without a fault, as

perfect as a sledge can be.

116

MAKING A SLEDGE

The runners were shod with strips of iron, a style
that has quite ousted the old plan of shoeing with
bone or mud. I have seen a few Eskimo sledges
with bone runners; the people say that they serve
better in the soft snow of the springtime ; but mud
I have never seen, and probably my Okak neighbours
have forgotten how to use it. The Killinek people
still fancy it ; they mix clay and moss with water in
a pot, and plaster it on hot. It freezes instantly, and
must then be scrubbed to smoothness. It is cheap,
and that is the only advantage it has over iron ; it is
so brittle that every collision with a jagged rock
knocks a bit off, and for this reason the travelling
man from the Killinek neighbourhood carries a pot
for mud-boiling among the load on his sledge, and is
ready to halt at any time on the road and do a job
of plastering.

Jerry and Julius screwed the irons on to the
runners, and sand-papered them till they shone;
and then, exactly four days after the fetching of
the tree, they dragged the sledge up to the door
of the hospital, and left it standing on the snow.
" We dare not take it indoors,*' they said, " because
it would warp."

I admired that handsome new sledge of mine,

and thought to have a memento of it : I called to

the crowd of men who had followed it to the door,

and asked them, '^ Which of you can make me a little

toy sledge, the likeness of that one ? " They looked

at one another, and said ^' Atsuk " (I don't know) ;

but a bustling little fellow asked again what the

question was, and then came forward saying ^'Uvanga,

immakka" (I can, probably). I explained what I

wanted, and he nodded and lit his pipe to help him

117

MAKING A SLEDGE

to think. '< This big sledge of mine is sixteen feet
long," I said ; *' make me a sledge just as many inches
long, and two and a half inches broad instead of feet»
then it will be adsingoamarik (the very image)."

I found him a little box, and he went off to start
his work. Presently he came back. ** Tukkekan-
gilak," he said.

« What is the matter, Efraun ? "

'^ It is not like an Eskimo sledge."

^' If you make it sixteen inches by two and a
half, and three-quarters of an inch high, it will be
exactly Uke."

^^Atsuk," said Efraim. However, I persuaded
him to finish the Uttle sledge, and it stands as an
ornament in my room to this day ; but Efraim was
not satisfied. *^ To your eyes it may look all right,"
he said, '^but to the eyes of the People it is all
wrong. It is too long and narrow" — and that was
the end of the matter. But I know that it is an
exact model of my Eskimo travelling sledge, made
carefully to scale by Efraim's nimble fingers; and
only the Eskimo sense of proportion is odd 1

It was in the bitterest of the winter cold that I

made my first sledge journey. By this time the

people had invented a name for me; they said my

own name, '' Tukkekangilak,'' had no meaning —

which very possibly may be true, though their real

reason was that they dislike a name that ends in a

consonant, unless it be a "t" or a "k." I heard

various references to " Atta " and " Hoddo," which

were, I suppose, my own name Eskimo-ised; but

before long these dropped out and I became Aniasi-

orte, the Pain Hunter. And so, during the last days

of January, the word went round that Aniasicnrte

118

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

was going to Hebron, and that Jerry and Julius were
to be the drivers. A goodly number of the people
made up their minds to go too, and thus it came
about that I headed a procession of fourteen sledges.
At the outset I knew nothing about it, for we
started in pitchy darkness at five o'clock in the
morning. Julius called it a fine morning, but as far
as I was concerned it might have been midnight.
I could see nothing but some bhusk and shadowy
shapes moving to and fro in the dim glimmer of a
hurricane lamp, and if it had not been for the spice
of new excitement I could have wished myself back
among the blankets. I was well padded with woollens
and sealskins, but the night air nipped my nose a
little, and I was glad to keep rubbing it with my
sealskin glove.

Julius, like the experienced driver he is, went
through the list of travelling necessaries to make
sure that he had got them all aboard, and then told
me that he was ready to start.

Immediately hands were thrust towards me from

all parts of the darkness, and I realised that a huge

crowd of people had silently collected to watch us

off, and to shake ourj hands and say ''Aksunai."

** Aksuse," I shouted ; '' taimak (ready), Julius " ; and

at the word Jerry sprinted along the track, and

the dogs went racing after him. The line tightened

with a jerk, and the sledge started with a bound

that nearly threw me off. Some good Mend seized

the hurricane lant^n, and ran along with it to

show the way among the boulders, but he had to

be nimble to keep out of the way of the boisterous

dogs. Sledge dogs, unless they are very tired, are

always eager to be on the move ; and ours were in

119

MY FraST SLEDGE JOURNEY

such a hurry that they tried to take short cuts of
their own, leaping over great snowdrifts and franti-
cally straining to climb huge hummocks of ice,
and we might easily have lost some of them, or at
least have had some broken harness, if it had not
been for the willing help of our army of spectators.
That dash between the hummocks to the sea ice
was like a nightmare : the flickering lantern, darting
hither and thither; the dim shapes of men and
boys rushing about, chasing the unruly dogs; the
yelping and shouting, with the pad-pad of footsteps
and the grind of the runners — ^the whole scene comes
back to me as I write. And all the while the people
were sticking to the sledge like flies, sitting, standing,
kneeling, clinging, getting a ride somehow, all in
a great good humour, and dropping off one by one
when we reached the sea ice.
So I got my first send-ofi^.

We were fairly on the way; and Julius struck
a match and lit his pipe. In the flicker I got a
glimpse of his face, all glittering with frost; his
stubby beard was decorated with icicles, and his
eyebrows were crusted with frozen snow ; and when
I passed a hand over my own face, I found that
I was in the same pUght. Julius was on the watch :
he leaned over to me and said, ^* Did you wash your
face this morning ? "

^* No," said I, " the missionary told me not.**

"Good,"said Julius, "now yoiu* face will not freeze."

I shivered to think what would have happened to

my face if 1 had washed it: as it was, my cheeks

and chin ached with the cold, and I could not help

raising a furtive hand from time to time, just to

make sure that I was not yet frozen.

ISO

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

By seven o'clock the sky was beginning to

lighten, and we made our first halt at the famous

ten-mile point Parkavik (**the meeting-place").

There the men disentangled the dogs, which by

continual crossing over had plaited their traces

together like the strings of a maypole ; and I thought

it well to drink some hot coffee. The coffee was

not hot, although it was in a stone jar wrapped in

a dogskin, but it was drinkable, which is more than

I can say for it a few hours later, when it had

assmned the form of ice-cream — not particularly

tempting under the cu-cumstances. The drivers

did not want any: they had taken a good draught

of water and ,a lump of frozen seal meat before

starting, in addition to the breakfast of bread and

meat and weak tea that I had given them, so they

were content to wait a while. During their tedious

unravelling of the knotted harness the other sledges

began to come up, and soon the whole fourteen

were assembled at Parkavik. We waited until all

were ready, for the very simple reason that if we

had started no exertions could have kept the other

teams still, and so it came about that the starting

again was by way of being an imposing spectacle.

My sledge, with the drivers swelling with pride,

headed the procession along the frozen fiord, and

the others followed at proper intervals.

Not the least interesting part of this unique sight
was the shadow : the sun was just up, and there was
a marvellous string of spider-legged dogs and top-
heavy sledges and weird, thin men sharply outUned
on the pink snow. Travelling was rather more
pleasant in the sunshine ; the air felt warmer, in spite

of the forty-three degrees of frost by my Fahrenheit

ISl

MY t'IRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

thermometer, and I was able to take some notice of

the doings of the drivers. There was a fiill half mile

of om* procession, and all the drivers seemed to be

shouting all the time. It is a habit with them ; they

feel that the dogs must be told constantly what they

are to do ; and a driver's work consists very largely

of an unending repetition of the orders to the dogs.

" Ouk-ouk-ouk " (go to the right) they say, or " Ra-

ra-ra-ra-ra " (to the left) ; and if it is neither right

nor left it is a continual '' Huit-huit-huit " (go straight

on). The leading dog has a good deal of responsibility

on its shoulders ; Geshe, my leader, had a trace about

forty feet long, and needed to be on the alert to pick

out her driver's voice at that distance. When I

shouted to her she looked over her shoulder in a

surprised sort of way, as if to say "Julius is in charge

of this team : what are you shouting for ? " but when

Julius murmured a quiet " Ouk," away she curved to

the right with the whole team wheeling after her,

until his cry of '' Huit " checked her. Some of the

men were less favoured than we : I saw one of them

shortening his leader's trace, and deposing the dog

by this means from its proud position, while the poor

brute whined and yelped and whistled as if it were

having a flogging ; and not a few of the drivers were

shouting themselves hoarse because their leaders were

stupid or disobedient or sulky.

Towards noon a man ahead of us shouted ^< Ah "

at the top of his voice, and every driver took up the

cry. All the dogs stopped and lay down vrith one

accord, and all the drivers were biisily heaving their

sledges on to one side. It was time to ice the runners 1

It was a typical Eskimo idea, to do it all together, but

there was sense in it It would have been practically

12S

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

impossible for one sledge to stop while the others
went on» for the simple reason that the dogs will not
do it ; besides, the Eskimo is a companionable soul,
and likes to have all these little things done in
company.

My drivers fished a sealskin bag from under the
doubled-up bearsldn on which they had been sitting,
and after exchanging a few words Jerry went off to
disentangle the dogs again, while Julius made ready
to do the icing. He sucked a mouthftil of the luke-
warm water in the bag and squirted it over the iron
shoe of each runner, running quickly along as he did
it and rubbing it smooth with the back of his leather
glove. The water turned to ice instantaneously at
the touch of the cold iron, but the men were taking
no risks— every sledge was turned so that the runners
were on the shady side, another instance of the natural
resourcefulness of the Eskimo . Most of the men had
brought jars or bags of water with them, and the few
who had not came to borrow from us because we had
the best supply. The borrower had a very simple
method of carrying the water : he just filled his mouth
and ran back to his own sledge, perhaps a hundred
yards or more.

Our sledge caravan got rather scattered as the
day wore on ; in fact, with some of the men who
had only a few dogs it resolved itself into an earnest
race to do the sixty miles in the one day. My drivers
took no notice of their huny, *' Let them go," they
said, ** we are aU right, we shall get there."

Just in front of us there was a curious erection in

the shape of a house on runners, a sort of square tent,

somewhere about the size of a Punch and Judy show

only not so tall, built on a sledge. This contained

12S

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

the driver's wife, and his idea was that she should sit

tight and not feel the cold. The idea was, no doubt,

an excellent one; but it had the disadvantage of

boxing the lady up in the dark and depriving her of

all view of the outside world, and consequently she

was unable to take care of herself properly. We

came to a boulder-strewn beach, all ice covered, one

of those places where the dogs try to go fast and are

constantly getting their traces caught round points of

ice. Off went the dogs with a rush, and the man

after them to keep them straight. The sledge had

nobody to guide it; it ran up the side of a great

hummock and over it turned. My view of the

proceedings from twenty yards behind was of a

sledge upsetting and a heavily-padded and very

surprised-looking Eskimo matron being somersaulted

out of the top of her canvas house. She sat on the

hard snow, gazing ruefully at her sledge as it bumped

along at a good ten mUes an hour ; but she managed

to collect her wits sufficiently to pick herself up and

make a flying leap on to my sledge as it passed her.

A mile fiu*ther on we came on her husband sitting

on a lump of ice and puffing unconcernedly at his

pipe, whUe his dogs enjoyed a rest after their scamper.

Hebron is admirably placed for a sensational

arrival The track turns sharply round a juttmg

point of land and then runs for a straight mile and

a half over the frozen harbour to the Mission station ;

consequently the keen-eyed people saw us as soon as

we came round the point, and a good many of the

men and bojrs started over the ice at a run to meet

us, while the rest of the population collected on the

slope in front of the village to watch.

From our point of view it was a relief to see the

1S4

Walrus Tusks and Ivory Carvings

Eskimofp Tbe pidufe show! men, wonivn, &l«JBa, daay m IcftjA, ufeli, ^rdi, ud vJ
uioxli and iwfi Duula rrom walnu-iroty by the Otnk Eikimoi.

Found in Hiathbn Graves

TbdHiIben Eiklau

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

houses among the snow and rocks after our cpld day's
travelling; and to them it was the biggest excite-
ment of the winter. You can imagine how they
mrould shout when they first saw our sledge ; the big
team of dogs and the three men on the sledge would
be enough to tell them at once that it was a
Eluropean. Presently we got within sound of their
shouting ; ** KablundJc, Kablun&k/' they yelled, and
their outbursts came booming over the ice in the still
evening air. *^ Amalo, amalo " (another) they roared,
as each sledge came round the point; and by the
time we reached them and looked back along the
track the thirteenth sledge was just in sight, with its
trotting little mannikin (kiver and its bunch of little
black dots of dogs, and the excitement was at fever
pitch. There had never been anything like this
before. Such a procession! It was a sight to re-
member ; a long, dull streak across the clean, bright
snow, alive with a series of crawling dots, the nearest
easily distinguishable as men and dogs, shouting and
yelping and racing towards us, the furthest mere
black specks almost seeming to stand stilL There
was no mistake about the welcome ; each sledge as
it came up the slope was pounced upon by a laughing,
gesticulating mob, who whisked it off, dogs and all,
towards one or other of the Eskimo houses.

It is their way of inviting ; seize the guest and
take him along ; and the boys ran in front of the dogs
crying ^^ Hau-hau-hau," and leading them on until
at the sound of "Ah'' they drew up at the proper
doon

As for myself, I was shaking hands with a
bearded, frosted man, the Hebron missionary; and

a score of willing helpers were carrying my luggage

1S6

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

into the house and rushing back for more, and helping
to loosen the dogs» and fold up the harness, and dear
the snow away from the runners, and store everjrthing
away snug and safe for the night.

Hebron was a veritable land of dogs. Our pro-
cession had brought about a hundred and forty to add
to the already large supply, and in consequence the
place swarmed with them. By daytime it was not
so bad ; I {could at all events see my way and avoid
treading on the sleeping brutes, though it was not
very comfortable to be persistently followed by a
dozen or more of the wolfish-looking creatures ; but
by night it was awful. The dogs sang and snarled
and fought and held meetings of their own, and
prowled about in gangs in the moonlight, furtive and
terrible. I do not suppose the Eskimos noticed the
extra noise, or, for the matter of that, the extra
number of doggy slumberers around their doors;
but I feel pretty certain that the feeding was a matter
of concern to them. Sledge dogs are ravenously
hungry when feeding-time comes, and an ordinary
team can easily polish off the carcase of a seal at one
meal ; so that, though feeding-time comes only three
or four times a week, our band of Okak dogs must
have made a big hole in the Hebron stock of seals.
Some of the people visited Okak later in the winter ;
a sort of complimentary return call. I suppose it was,
though it smacked very much of getting their own
back.

About noon on the day after my arrival at

Hebron the fourteenth sledge appeared. The owner

had been hauling firewood all day on the day before

we left Okak, and had started the trip with tired

dogs. He paid for his folly by having to camp at

186

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

** Half Way House," a tumble -down hut thirty
miles from anywhere, without fire and with nothing
but; a few scraps of dried fish for food. His poor dogs
had to go hungry : but they were workers, and came
trotting up the slope to Hebron in a most business-
like way. With them came Shergo.

Shergo was a remarkable character among dogs.
In the litter of plump black and white pups that
arrived in the late autumn, mothered by my beauti-
ful leading dog 6esh£, there was a strange-looking
little yellow creature which we named Shergo
(meaning " by-and-by *'). To which of her doggy
ancestors she harked back, I cannot say; but she
iTvas an oddity, an utter freak. As soon as she
could toddle she began to wander. Any team that
appeared to be starting on a journey would do for
Shergo, and so she made a good many futile trips
to and fro with the wood sledges. Once she
thought the water sledge looked promising, and
went with that; but came back looking sad and
wise and disappointed — only three miles to run, and
a cold and shivery waiting for the tank to be filled,
and then the three miles home again.

Shergo was not content to follow behind : no,
if she choose to go with a team she took her place
among them, and trotted with a grotesque air of
determination, as if half the weight were on her bony
little shoulders. I was not surprised when I saw
her come trotting into Hebron with the fourteenth
sledge. She had attached herself to that because it
was the slowest, and the easiest for her short legs. I
tried to befriend her, and hustled her ofi^ to where
my own dogs were waiting for their food ; but she

preferred to take care of herself, and was generally

127

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

present at all the feedings in the village, snatching

a precarious bone at each and fleeing with it to a

solitary place. I got quite fond of Shergo, with a

pitying sort of fondness, but she remained entirely

unresponsive. For a whole day she was missing,

and I knew in my inmost mind that she had gone

with a sledge that had left at daybreak for the north.

Right enough, she came home late at night, limping

painfully among a sledge team that she had met on

the hills. ** Take that miserable little thing back to

Hebron" is the translation of what Shergo heard

on the Saeglek mountain pass, thirty miles north

of Hebron, and she was ignominiously handed over

and tied on the southward-bound sledge, and only

allowed to trot the last few miles because she was

nearly frozen. When I set out for Okak at the

end of my four days' stay I sat on the sledge

gripping Shergo in my arms; and she whined and

yelped to be allowed to go northward. Home was

the word, however, and Shergo at last submitted

Out of sight of Hebron I dropped her overboard,

and she galloped forward to find a vacancy among

the big dogs that were pulling. She ran with them

all day, lagging sadly in the smooth places where

the pace was fast, but leading triumphantly up the

hills where the coUar work had to be done, all the

time pretending to her queer little self that she was

working. We reached Okak in eleven hours and a

half, with Shergo trotting wearily in the van.

She was home again — where she did not seem to

want to be! She moped, and followed the wood

sledges, but found no satisfaction; and a few days

later her odd career was over, for I found her stiff

and dead on the frozen sea beach.

188

CHAPTER X

An urgent Call — ^Alono the Ick-edob— Our Guide—
A COMIC Touch — Starting Home — Over the Land

I HAD imagined Labrador to be an ideally
healthy land, a sort of extra- Arctic Switzerland,
and I was disappointed to find that it did not quite
come up to my expectations. Europeans of sound
constitution enjoy good health, if one overlodcs such
trifles as teeth coming loose as a result of too much
tinned food, and a touch of influenza when that
miserable complaint is in season. Influenza time
comes twice a year, in midwinter (February) and
midsummer (August); and the Eskimos knuckle
under with one accord. When an epidemic begins
it seldom misses any of them ; they all fall ill to some
extent, be it mild or severe, and so one leams to
view the onset of an infectious sickness with appre-
hension«

Happily, only a few of the actual fevers have
been known in Labrador, for if there were an out-
break of anything really .fatal among the Eskimos
it would mow them down as a scythe mows grass.

It was a sudden and very real feeling of alarm
that made the Hebron missionary hurry over to
Okak with the message, '^Come, my people are
dying I "

It was ten o'clock at night when he arrived, a

black night with a cloudy sky and a moaning wind

from the east ; and when I heard the rushing of feet

129 I

AN URGENT CALL

and the hum of voices outside, and the hanuner»
hammer, hammer on the bolted door, I knew that
something serious was stirring. I made haste to
open, and in came my visitor, a trim-built, active,
bushy-bearded little man, the very man for Arctic life.

** Come in, come in," I said, and seized his hands.

" Come," he said, " come, my people are dying."

This was no time for argument ; his earnestness
was real ; and I turned to the crowd that surrounded
the sledge where it stood on the snow at the foot of
the steps, and shouted, ** Who will drive my sledge
to Hebron ? "

There was a roar of volunteers: ''Uvanga,
uvanga, uvanga " (I, I, I) ; and I tried to choose the
two who shouted first, and called them into the
house. We wasted very little time over discussing
the situation ; it was a case of urgency ; there must
be no delay. If we started at five in the momimr,
said the Eskimos, we could run the first ten mUes^
the dark, and have the gathering light of the sunrise
to help us before we reached the first difficult pass.
This seemed sensible advice. "We will do so," I
told the men ; ** call us in good time so that we may
be ready.'*

" So let it be," said the drivers, and they got up
to go home, perfectly cheerful although they knew
that there was no rest for them, but they must spend
the short night in making ready for the run.

Suddenly there came a roar from the crowd out-
side. " Another sledge, another sledge," they yelled ;
and we heard their pattering feet trotting down the
track to meet the new comers. My drivers were off
like a shot, bounding down the steps to see what was

going on ; and with that we set to on our supper.

ISO

AN URGENT CALL

In the middle of the meal the drivers came in,
time with serious faces, "Ajomarmat" (it
cannot be helped), they said; ^^the ice is broken.
Two of the Hebron people have followed the
niissionary, and they say that there is a storm from
the east, and the ice was breaking behind them. To
travel is impossible/' This was a blow ; but we had
a long talk ova* the matter, and decided at the least
to go in the morning and have a look at things.
Then we went to bed.

Five o'clock came all too soon: I was hardly
warm among the blankets before thumps resounded
on the door, and I crawled out of bed to find the
drivers dressed in their sealskins, the dogs in harness,
and the sledge standing ready for its load.

It was a bleak and dispiriting business, this pull-
ing on of cold clothes and boots by the lamplight ;
but there was work ahead, and we were eager to be
at it ; and by the time I was dressed the sledge was
ready, and a crowd of people were keeping the dogs
from running away. I thought that the men de-
served a good breakfast, so I called them into the
house and set them to work upon a big pannikin of
hot tinned mutton, with what looked like unlimited
bread and butter and weak tea. In an incredibly
short time I heard them going out, chuckUng with
satisfietction, and muttering ** Thankie, thankie," and
I found that they had left a clear board behind them.
Probably if they had been travelling for themselves
they would never have bothered about break-
fast ; a chunk of frozen seal-meat would have satis-
fied them; but here was a chance not to be had
every day, and I think they worked all the better

for it.

181

ALONG THE ICEEDGE

It was anything but a pleasant morping, if morn-
ing it could be called. It was pitchy black, with
never a star and no glimmer of moonshine ; and only
the fact that the dogs could smell their way along the
beaten track made it possible for us to start at alL
Although the thermomet^ registered only twenty
degrees of frost the cold was bitter in the extrane,
for a raw air came moaning ftoux the east, chilling us
through oiur heavy sealskins and making our cheeks
and noses ache. We were even deprived of the beae-
fit of an occasional trot alongside the sledge, for we
could only see the faintest glimmer of the snow on
which we were running, and when I tried to warm
my stiffening toes I kept tripping and stumbling over
jagged points of ice until one of the men shouted
** Sit stiU, or we shall be losing you."

After that I sat still, and hoped for the morning.

One gets to know what hope means at a time like
that. For two solid hours the agony went on, and
then a faint glimmer of grey began to show to the
eastward : it changed to a dull red, sullen and lurid
in the morning haze, and we began to see the wide
stretch of white ice beside us, and the dogs with their
spidery shadows, and a black and awful sea ahead
of us.

Then we stopped our sledge, and clustered

together to consult. I seem to see it now, that little

knot of anxious men, with faces all frosted and features

but dimly discernible in the half darkness, standing

together on the frozen sea with the ice heaving and

groaning under their feet, questioning and planning

to find a road to Hebron ; and my pulse quickens as

I seem to hear again the quick pattering of dogs' feet

in the gloom behind us, and to see the short, light

182

OUR GUIDE

sledg€ with its active little driver, and to hear that
cheery voice say " Aksuse." Johannes I

What was he doing ? " Oh," said Johannes, " I
heard you were going to Hebron, so I thought I
would come with you. I hear they have plenty of
walruses at Hebron, and I want some walrus skin
for new drags for my sledge. I think they will sell
me some." What a day to choose to go shopping I
I wonder if there was more at the back of that little
man's mind. He joined our little conference, and
listened with nods to all that our drivers had to say.
They were for turning back. ** There is no road,"
they said, **the ice is all broken there around the
headland across the bay. Let us turn homewards."
^^ A-a-a-tsuk," said Johannes. '^1 know a track
over the headland ; let me see if we can get to it."
He walked along the ice at the foot of the rocks,
now standing for a moment, now running a few steps,
now clinging to the stones, and we watched him in
silence. I admired that little Eskimo ; to my mind
he seemed the very personification of dogged pluck ;
and as I stood shivering out there on the ice at the
foot of the cliffs of lonely Labrador, and watching
the tiny fur-clad figure as it moved steadily on to
where the big headland of Uivak loomed black and
stately, I said to myself. ** There is a man ; well may
he call himself one of the People." He came back
presently, and said " We can do it " — ^and we did it !

I think that of all my memories of life in Labrador

the most vivid is the memory of that race along the

firinge of ice at the foot of the cliffs. On the left

the wall of rock rose steep ; on the right the black

water churned and tumbled and ground the floating

pans of ice together: beneath us the thick sea-ice

138

OUR GUIDE

rocked and heaved with the force of the waves, and
here and there the water came swilling over. In
front was a racing sledge, with Johannes sitting on
it and yelling "Hu-it (go on), hu-it, hu-it" to his
dogs; and our teams were following at safe inter-
vals, galloping as fast as their feet would carry them.
'' Sit tight, sit tight," said the drivers ; and there we
sat, bowling along over the heaving ice. Sometimes
one of the men pushed out a leg to guide the sledge
round a bend or to check it where it seemed likely to
slip sideways : they said nothing ; just sat there and
chewed at their pipes, and left the dogs to follow the
voice that shouted unceasingly in front. At the
place where the guide led us on to the headland the
ice was broken away from the rock, and was rising
and falling with the swelL One moment it came
groaning up to the level of the land ; the next it
sank away and left a leap of several feet. The dogs
went scrambling over, glad to get on to something
firm ; but the drivers held the sledge back until the
ice began to rise, and then with a yell they started
the dogs again and bumped across the crack just as
it [came up level. A second too soon or too late
would have meant smashing the front of the sledge
to splinters ; and as we drew on to the land I looked
back and saw the ice dipping again behind us, and
my companion's dogs coming on to take their
turn.

Johannes looked over his shoulder to see that we
were safe, and then started on foot, ahead of his dogs,
to show the track. It seemed a long way over the
headland, uphill and down, and always through soft
snow ; and all the morning that little man trotted on,

knee deep in snow, lifting his feet high to run the

1S4

A COMIC TOUCH

more easily, and keeping the same steady pace, hour
after hour, with the dogs hard at his heels. Some-
times he got on faster than the dogs, especially where
the snow was deep and they had practically to swim
because they could not get a foothold; and then
Johannes would run from side to side with his head
down, to make them helieve he was kK>king for
something, or he would pretend to scatter something
on the snow ; and every time they saw him playing
this truly Eskimo game of make-believe they craned
their necks forward and whined and struggled in
their eagerness to catch him up.

When lunch-time came I had a laugh at my
companion's plight. We sat side by side upon my
sledge to make the meal more sociable ; and I think
we both contemplated with relish the bread and
meat that was thawing in our warmest pockets, for
the excitement of the trip had sent the hours slipping
by faster than we had thought, and hunger soon nips
in that cold air. But my bearded friend was frost-
bound; he could not open his mouth, because the
moisture of his breath had frozen his beard and
moustache firmly together. We carefully thawed
him with our hands, and so he managed to get a
bite ; but the coffee froze him up again, and I am
afraid that I laughed a good deal at his predicament as
he cautiously poked thin chips of biscuit between his
teeth, with the sledge rolling and jolting so that he
missed as often as he hit. But he had the laugh on
his side before long.

I was dilating upon the advantages of having a
travelling box to sit in, while he was in favour of
balancing on the top of the load like the Eskimos.

'^If you have a travelling box," said I, ''you can

185

A COMIC TOUCH

drop all your loose belongings in without fear of
losing them, and you have no need to ding on
constantly; you can loll in comfort and'' — but my
words were cut short by a lurch of the sledge as it
passed over a buried boulder, and off I roUed into the
soft snow, where I remained sticking head downwards,
with fiitUe legs waving in the air. The drivers of
the last sledge puUed me out and set me right way
up ; and there I sat, scraping the freezing snow out
of my neck and ears and hair, while everybody
laughed.

Early in the afternoon we lurched down a steep
place on to the sea-ice, and saw a clear, firm road in
front of us.

Johannes came to my sledge for a talk, and told

me marvellous tales of the land over which we had

crossed. ''Nellojut nunangat" (that is the land

of the heathen), he said ; ** there is a big village of

iglos up there, all tumbling to pieces, and you can

find flint harpoons and broken stone pots among the

rubbish buried in the floors. No man has lived

there for a long time" — '* ovatsiaro-pftrirluk " (a

far-away by-and-by) was his picturesque way of

putting it — '' and the people do not often travel that

way. They are a little frightened, for it is strange

and lonely among the tumble-nlown huts, and there

is a big heathen graveyard on the headland, where

they used to lay the dead hunters down in their

stone graves in sight of the sea. But I have been

there, tautuk (I should like to go again) ; why, that

steep place that we came down is a river in the

summer, and the trout are so many in it that you can

catch them with your hands in the pool under the

waterfall.'* But Johannes's story came to an end, for

1S6

ARRIVAL AT HEBRON

his dogs were squabbling, and off he ran to terrify
them with his shouts.

As the afternoon wore on the dogs began to

tire, and Johannes trotted in front again; and

the rest of us sat on our sledges until the cold began

to chill us, and then ran alongside until weariness

made us sit down again. So, cold and weary by

turns, and at last cold and weary at the same time,

we drew near to Hebron ; and every time I looked

ahead in the gathering twilight, and afterwards in

the bright moonshine, I saw a trim little figure clad

in silvery sealskins trotting tirelessly on, and a pack

of patient draggle-tailed dogs struggling gamely to

keep at his heels. So we came to Hebron in the

dark of the night, seventy-one miles over sea-ice and

snow-covered hiUs, and of the seventy-one miles

Johannes had trotted at least forty. Like ghosts

in the moonlight we drew up the slope towards

the sleeping village, with no sound but the grinding

of the runners, and the quick panting of the dogs

and the patter-patter of their feet.

The Hebron dogs smelt strangers; they woke

from their frosty beds in the snow porches, and ran

out to whine and yelp ; and the village awoke with

a start Lights flashed everywhere, and with a

forore of exdtement the people turned out of their

reindeer-skin beds, and came helter-skelter out of

doors, pulling on clothes as they ran, and shouting

the word that they always use to betoken the coming

of a sledge — ** Kemmutsit, kemmutsi-i-it/' ** Nako-

mdk, nakomdk," they shouted as they wrung our

hands, '* Aksuse." They clustered round their own

missionary with evident affection ; *' Aksunai," they

said, '* nakudlaipotit "" (we are thankful to you) ; then

187

STARTING HOME

in their practical way they shouldered our rugs and
boxes and led the way to the Mission house.

I need not say much about the two days. I spent
in Hebron. The people were in a state of great
excitement, ready to fall in with any plan» for typhus
fever had broken out in two of the huts, and four
of the victims were already dead.

I got the sick ones isolated, the infected/ huts
destroyed, and the clothes and bedding sunk into
the sea through a hole in the ice, and the pestilence
spread no further.

It meant the outlay of a little money on helping
those so summarily rendered homeless to set up
housekeeping afresh; but I shall always think
that the money was well spent — and I was sur-
prised to find how little it costs to make an Eskimo
home.

As soon as it was safe to go I started home, and

this time my sledge was the only one, for Johannes

was stiU busy bu3ring walrus hide. We set off at

daybreak on a fine bright morning, with the whole

population lined up to see us off or to run the first

half mile with us. My drivers sat grinning on the

sledge and let the Hebron men do the guiding ; said

if many hands make light work that sledge must

have slid easily, for there were more hands to heave

it from side to side among the stones and to steady

it down the sudden dips than could find room for

a grip. A horde of boys ran in front of the dogs,

shouting and chattering and chasing one another;

and the women and older folks on the bank behind

us yelled " Aksuse, aksuse '* as long as we could hear

them. A good send-off is half the journey ; and I

could see by the smiles on the drivers' faces, as they

1S8

STARTING HOME

complacently puffed at their pipes, that they felt the
elation as much as I did myself.

Our helpers dropped off one by one, and with a
last wave of the hand we turned out of the bay and
left Hebron hidden behind the rocks.

For nine hours we jogged on in the usual style of
an Eskimo sledge journey : that is to say, the drivers
shared the tasks as drivers do, one looking after the
dogs while the other guided the sledge, and some-
times changing places for a little variety ; the dogs
played their usuaJ trick of getting all tangled up, and
compelling us to stop every ten miles to disentangle
them ; and I trotted and sat still by turns, flicking
the long whip-lash to and fro, and listening to the
chatter of the men as they talked of the landmarks
we were passing. We only saw one sign of liffe the
whole day long, and that was when we met a boy
with a idedge and six dogs twenty miles out of
Hebron. He was taking home a load of firewood,
and had come all that way because there are no trees
so far north as Hebron itself. He did not stop, but
just wheeled his dogs out of the way so as to keep
the two teams from getting tangled, and shouted
** Aksunai '' as he passed. I suppose he had spent the
night in the woods.

Late in the afternoon we reached the frozen

river down which we had come from our crossing

of the headland, and the men became eager and

excited. In front of us was a smooth sheet of dark

grey ice, covering what had been black water when

we passed it a couple of days before. We halted

at the lumpy joining of new ice and old, and the

men went cautiously forward to try it. They walked

twenty or thirty yards, and then stopped and

189

OVER THE LAND

beckoned me to follow. It was with a little natural

trepidation that I set my foot upon the pasty -looking

sur&oe; but I was not so heavy as the Eskimos^

and judged that what bore them would be safe for

me too. '* Kannodlungitoky immakka ** (it is probably

all right) were the first words they said when I

joined them on the queer elastic ice, and one of th«n

stamped his foot and set the whole field shuddering.

It rocked and swayed as we walked to and firo, and

I wondered how the heavy sledge would £ue round

the steep face of the heaiUand. ** Is it safe for the

sledge ? " I asked them. ** Immakka " (probably — ^it

may be), was their answer. ** Are we to travel ov^

the ice or over the land," said I ; ** what do you

think.'* ^ Issumangnik " (just as you please) said

the drivers; and that was as much as I could get

them to say. To my mind they seemed none too

sure about it, and I felt that there was nothing to

be gained by taking a needless risk. '* Over the land,**

I said, and with a nod of agreement and never a

word the men turned cheerfiiUy to help the sledge

up the steep walL The dogs clawed and slipped

and whined as they struggled up the frozen brook,

and the drivers hauled and heaved at the groaning

sledge, while I clung to it in a hopeless effort to

keep my feet. The little flexible feet of the

Eskimos, with their tight-fitting and supple sealskin

boots, seemed to grasp the waves and roughnesses

in the slippery fresh-water ice, and up the two

willing fellows clambered, shoving the nose of the

sledge this way and that to give it the best road.

We found our tracks of two days before in the soft

snow on the land, and the dogs put their noses down

and went whimpering along, distressed because they

140

OVER THE LAND

could go no £aster. It was not till we had raced
darwn the slope to the ice again, and were round the
bay that we had skirted in so hazardous a fashion
under Johannes's guidance, that my drivers stopped
the dogs and turned to look once more at Cape
Uivak, where he rose stif&y from the wide plain of
ue^e ice. ^* Kannodlungitok, immakka/' said one
to the other ; and then, turning to me with a smile,
^* If we had not had you with us we should have
crossed the new ice. It is probably all right — ^for
Eskimos."

They had been quite eontent to face five hours'
haid work over the headland instead of five miles'
clear fast run round its foot: risks to them were
nothing — ^they knew the ice — but they would not
even 9eem to take me into danger.

And they called to the dogs and drove on,
homewards.

141

CHAPTER XI

A PEOYIDENTfAL ChBCK — SoFT SnoW — SlEDOB DoOS.

MY next journey to Hebron contained one of
those adventurous touches tliat all Labrador
travellers know. The winter weather is alwajrs
treacherous, and however carefully one may study
the barometer, and however wise and experienced
the drivers may be, storms may arise and snow may
fall at the shortest notice.

We made our start at five o'clock on a calm, cold
morning, with a cloudless sky above us all twinkling
with stars. It seemed an ideal travelling morning ;
the dogs were brisk and in the best condition, and
the track was as good as a winter track can be.
We had every prospect of making a fast run, and
when the sun rose I had my first taste of the real
pleasures of travel

There was an exhilaration about the keen, frosty
air and the crackling snow, and I thoroughly enjoyed
the alternate running for warmth and resting on the
sledge in the cold sunshine.

In less than six hours we reached the neck of

land that stands half way between Okak and Hebron,

and climbed the steep slope at a pace that took my

breath away. The drivers seemed quite at their

ease ; as a matter of fact, Eskimos are so used to

running and climbing that they never seem to pant

or lose their wind however hard they are pushed.

Running is part of their nature.

142

A PROVIDENTIAL CHECK

We stopped on the summit to clear the dogs
for the run down the steep slope that leads to the
Hehron ice, and as we looked before us we saw a
cloud drifting quickly from the north, and lying
low upon the wide bay. One driver looked at the
other: they shook their heads. '^ Ajomarmat "' (it
cannot be helped), they said.

'< What is the matter? " I asked.

«< See that cloud : that is attuamek '* (the northern
storm).

We held a brief discussion of the situation, and

made up our minds to run for shelter. ^* Jannekunut*'

(to John's house), said the men, and they shouted

the dogs on to their legs again and we went whizzing

down the hill. And all the time there was running

in my mind the phrase out of the Bible, ** A little

cloud, no greater than a man's hand.'' At first sight

that little cloud would not have frightened me, but

the drivers knew it ; and when I looked again after

the exciting race down to the ice, I saw a heavy

grey wall coming tearing along to meet us. In a

few minutes it was upon us, and there had begun

one of the most anxious hours that I have ever

spent. I sat with my back to the wind, for I dared

not face it, and even through my thick sealskin

the wind cut bitterly. Each time I turned to look

I saw the same sight ; a wall of frozen snow beating

against us, a taut line stretching away to where the

dogs were lost to sight in the drift, and two plump,

fiir-clad, and frosted figures, clinging to the sledge

and running with heads down, guiding the sledge

with an instinct that did not fail them even in the

awful ** attuamek " which swallowed us up and blotted

out the landmarks, and drowned every sound in its

148

A PROVIDENTIAL CHECK

terrific roar. How the men found their way I do

not know, but suddenly we went bumping up a

bank and left the storm behind us. In another

minute we heard the howling of dogs, and when

the sledge went grinding over a patch of wood-

chipjnngs I knew that a house must be near. Sure

enough the dogs stopped on the sheltered side of

a wooden house nearly buried in snow, and one

of the men shouted to me ^* Go in — John's house."

I thumped the thick of the snow off my shoulders

and made for the porchi which was, of course, fiiU

of dogs ; but when I ** shooed " them out of the way

I was astonished to find that they were all in their

harness. I pulled the seal-hide thong that lifted

the latch, and went into the house. There sat

John, dad in all his travelling furs, with a dejected

head bowed upon his hands. He looked up in an

apathetic scnrt of way, but his look changed in an

instant to one of utter consternation. Then he

jumped to his feet and shouted for his daughter,

and the two of them stared, and wrung my hand,

and asked how ever I had managed to get there.

My side of the story was soon told, and then came

John's: one of his household had just met with

an accident, and he had harnessed his team to go

to Hebron, the nearest Mission station, for help,

when the storm came up and drove him indoors.

Between us we managed to set things to rights,

and all the evening John sat ruminating over the

strange happenings of the day; and he put my

own thoughts into words when he said, ''The

Hand of Grod is very near us on the Labrador.''

It is only a travelling incident, but I could

not help thinking of his words as we toiled

144

SOFT SNOW

through the soft snow to Hehron on the following
mormng.

On the way home from Hebron, a few days later,
we had to cross Nappartok Bay, a place with an un-
enviable reputation. No sledge driver will take upon
himself to guarantee a fast run if he has Nappartok
Bay to cross, for there the snow is always soft ; and
there, on my way home from Hebron, I had my
first taste of the real quality of a soft track. As soon
as we left the land, the dogs began to wallow in the
clinging snow, and the sledge nearly came to a stop.
The poor brutes seemed to be actually swimming,
unable to reach the bottom of the snow and get a
foothold, and floundering as they tried to lift their
legs above the surface for another step. By a sort of
instinct they dropped into line one behind the other,
so that each dog had the advantage of the trampled
track of the ones before it. I felt most sorry for the
leading dog, as she went shuffling and whining along
with nose down and tail up, but Jerry slipped on his
snowshoes and tramped ahead of her to give her some
sort of a road to follow. It was a curious sight : the
trudging Uttle Eskimo, with his feet wide apart,
swinging the big rackets round and planting tiiem
one in front of the other, and behind him the dogs,
marching in a narrow furrow, and looking Uke a long
line of waving tails.

Sometimes the snow was too deep for them ; they
looked round and whined, as if to say ** Do you really
mean us to go on? Why not camp until it is
better ?" but Julius said " Hu-it," and on they went,
trying their hardest and whistling with distress.

In one place even Julius's " Hu-it," repeated'over

and over again, failed to move them, though they

146 X

SOFT SNOW

struggled and tugged, and though the men heaved
the sledge from side to side to set the nmners free
from the clinging snow ; they simply wallowed, and
I wondered what was going to be the outcome. The
men were equal to the emergency ; no doubt it was
an everyday kind of occurrence to th^m ; they went on
snowshoes for twenty or thirty yards, and tramped
to and fro to harden a track, and then came back and
urged the dogs to try again, and so the sledge crawled
on. I slipped on my snowshoes and tried to go with
them, but after a mile or two I was absolutely
beaten ; my legs refused to be lifted, and once I fell
and had to be ignominiously rescued from a sea of
powdery snow by the ever-watchful Julius. It
seemed a shame to sit upon the sledge while the dogs
were toiling so hard, but there was nothing else for
it ; so I sat still and tried not to think about the poor
dogs, though really, when I saw the sledge sinking
above the cross-pieces, with its nose shoving a great
snowball in front of it, I had not the heart to sit
down. I jumped off, and immediately sank and
made the dogs' work all the harder by clinging to
the side of the travelling box and nearly upsetting
the whole thing. In the softest places, when the big
snowball grew between the runners in front, the men
came back and kicked it away, and lifted the nose
of the sledge up for a fresh plunge, and yelled '* Hu-it,
hu-it, hu-it " until the dogs went off with a scamper —
a burst of energy that only lasted for ten yards, when
the nose was under the snow again and needed all the
efforts of both men and dogs to make it plough for-
ward ever so slowly. It is not more than ten miles
across Nappartok Bay, but we took ten and a half

hours to cross it ; and after that crossing 1 no longer

146

SOFT SNOW

wondered why the old missionaries used the word
*' mauja " (soft snow), in their translation of Bunyan's
PilgrirrCs Progress^ to picture to Eskimo minds the
plight of the pilgrim when he got into the Slough
of Despond. What better word could they have
used for the clinging, sinking waste in which the
traveller's feet sank as he made his weary way
towards the wicket gate ? What word more vivid
than "mauja'* to a people who spend their lives
among the snow and ice and rocks of the frozen
Labrador ?

It is surprising to find how soon the dogs forget
the "mauja." Once through it they are quite willing
to trot along at their usual five miles an hour, and
even after their ten and a half hoiurs of labouring across
Nappartok Bay they were able to run the thirty miles
to Okak in good time — and without any whipping.
Eskimo drivers do not believe in flogging tired dogs :
it only takes the spirit out of them, they say, and
though I have seen lazy dogs and sulky dogs and
disobedient and quarrelsome dogs I felt glad that the
men did not treat them cruelly : a dog's life is hard
enough without that. The first thing was always to
shout at the dog—" Tawny " or " Glove " or " Lamp "
or whatever its name happened to be; and it was
amusing to see how the dog that heard its name
tightened up its trace and tried to efface itself by cross-
ing over to another place in the team. If it was only
a matter of laziness a word was enough, but when there
was a doggy quarrel afoot the reminder was soon for-
gotten and great hulking " I^amp ** would soon be back
in his place, snapping at his neighbour's heels. Then
one driver would say to the other " Una-firluk *' (that

awfiil creature), and without further ado he reached

147

SLEDGE DOGS

for the whip and ran alongside the sledge trailing the
lash on the snow.

The dogs looked over their shoulders and yelped,
and hurried and strained to get along as fast as
possible, while the prospective victim made wild
efforts to hide himself among the others.

It was useless: with an indescribable sweep of
the arm the driver sent the thirty feet of walrus-hide
lash hissing through the air, and with a sharp flick
caught the right dog a sounding crack on its flank.
There was a yell, and the poor dog drooped its tail
and cowered on the snow, crawling along with a
shrill whistling noise in anticipation of another smack.
Once was enough 1 But there are hard-headed
villains among dogs, that will not take the well-
meant hint of a single crack of the whip ; for them
there is a special flogging in store. The driver runs
forward and grasps the offender's trace, and hauls it
nearer to the sledge. And so the dog must run,
only a couple of yards or so from the man with the
whip, and the very terror which the hauling back
inspires is a sufficiently wholesome lesson for most
dogs. Ten minutes of running on a shortened trace
generally works a cure, but if this broadest of hints
seems useless three or four sound strokes of the lash
will send the poor dog back to his senses with a jerk,
and when, at the end of the whipping, his trace is
unhitched and he is aUowed to trot forward to his
place, he is a marvellous worker for an hour or
two — ^trace always tight, shoulders always forward,
with none of that shambling, make-believe, slack-
trace work that lazy dogs are apt to do. In the best
of teams there are always one or two dogs nmning

slack, and the drivers let it pass so long as the dogs

148

SLEDGE DOGS

take turns at it^ because it gives the team the chance
of resting by turns from the weight of the pulling.
A dog that must work all the time soon wears out,
and it always seemed better to me and my drivers to
take fifteen or seventeen dogs for a long trip and
maintain a good pace easily, than to force a team
of ten or eleven to do the work, as some of the
Eskimos do.

Good dogs do not need the whip to make them
trot, and my drivers were generally content to shout
at them or to flick the lash to and fro as a reminder.
When the dogs were tired one or the other of the
men used to run in front of them. Often the men
must have been as tired as the dogs themselves, but
no matter ; with the utmost cheerfulness big heavy
Julius would take off his sealskin dicky and tuck it
under the lashings of the sledge, and run ahead as if
he were a mere boy instead of the staid father of a
large family, and in a fair way to be a grandfather
before so very long. When he had run enough for
his purpose he would come back to the sledge for a
smoke while the other man took up the running, and
so between them they used to hurry the team over
the last ten or fifteen miles of a day's trip in two or
three hours, and sometimes land me at the snug
warmth of a proper house instead of dooming me to
an uncomfortable apology for rest in a snow hut —
though the snow hut would have served them very
well if they had been alone. It was an odd dance
that brought the man back to the sledge from his
place in front of the dogs : it would have been use-
less to try to get to one side and allow the dogs to
go past, for the dogs follow the runner with an

absolutely blind perseverance ; accordingly, the only

149

SLEDGE DOGS

thing to do was to stand still, and compel the dogs
to run past by shouting at thenou There was always
the same littie hesitation on the part of the dogs :
the man stood, and they expected to stand too. No,
" Hu-it, hu-it, hu-eeet," yelled the driver — perhaps he
flicked the whip across the heads of the toim — and
the frightened dogs ran on, while the runner b^an
to jump nimbly over the traces. He pranced up
and down, always seeming just to save himself from
falling, and sat down with a jerk as the sledge over-
took him.

Once I tried this characteristically Eskimo trick,
and nearly paid dearly for my rashness. I had
been running ahead of the dogs, and stopped with
a shout of " Hu-it " which the drivers took up. In
a moment I was among the tangle of traces, and
found that it takes skill to jump them successfully.
I hopped and skipped with all my energies, but I
had not the knack of the thmg, and down I went
with my feet caught in a jumble of seal-hide thongs.

The dogs were on me with a pounce, and the
next moments were a blurred impression of snarling,
fighting dogs and shouting, kicking drivers. A whip
cracked, and the dogs spread in terror, while the
men tried to calm them with deep-toned "Ah's";
and after that I always carried the whip with me
when I wanted to run ahead.

Dogs begin to get very ravenous when they have

run thirty or forty miles, and are ready to eat things

less palatable than human beings. Once, I remember

my fur cap blew off, and that was the last I saw of

it. There happened to be a sledge following close

behind us, and the dogs stopped to have a merry

little scuffle over the dry morsel that a chance wind

150

=.8

e-a

V.
11

11
It

SLEDGE DOGS

had blown in their way. It was all over in a moment,
and probably one of them had swallowed my cap
whole, so quickly was it demolished.

One of my drivers, good thoughtful fellow, in-
sisted on lending me his cap in spite of my protests.
'* Me all right,'' he grinned, ** Eskimo brains, no
fireeze, plenty of hair ; you, Kablun&k brains, freeze
very quick " ; and perhaps he was talking sense, for
the Eskimos very seldom wear caps except for
travelling ; they walk about on the bitterest, snowiest
days with their heads uncovered except for the thick
thatching of coal-black hair.

One thing that we saw on nearly every journey,
and that always set the dogs off at a gallop, was
the Arctic raven. That seems a solitary bird, for we
nearly always saw one only. The great black bird
used to stand on the snow, cocking its head this way
and that, and perhaps stalking a step or two in an
unutterably grave manner; and the dogs, as soon
as they caught sight of it, were off with futile haste,
each striving its utmost to get there first, and all
held in fixed order by their traces. The leading dog
had the best chance, but the raven had a wary old
eye upon the danger : it waited until the dogs were
within a few feet of it, and from the sledge it looked
as if it were caught, and then with leisurely flappings
betook itself off to a fresh stand, to wait with un-
ru£B[ed calm for a repetition of the same performance.

I have no doubt that the raven would have been
demolished, bones, feathers, and all, at a single gulp,
if it had waited another second ; but it never waited.
I never saw a driver shoot at a raven, though they
must be tempted at times, for I have known ravens'
wings to be used for cleaning out the stove-pipes.

SLEDGE DOGS

There seems to be no limit to a dog's appetite,
especially if it be a hungry travelling dog. During
one stay at Nain a man came to me with a very
rueful countenance to ask whether I had any spare
harness with me. He had followed my sledge finom
Okak, and wanted to get back again if only he could
be assisted out of the plight in which his dogs had
landed him. It appeued that the harness was all
wet when he reached Nain, so he hung it over the
roof of the hut in which he was lodging, expecting
it to dry in the wind. In the morning it was all
gone — ^in more senses than one, not a trace remained
— and his dogs were slinking about the village with
a furtive air and a very weU-fed appearance. He
seemed hurt by this ungrateful behaviour. ** And I
fed them, too,*" he said ; ** I gave them half a seal for
their supper." It was only the wolfish nature of
the dogs that made them devour the harness, and
not hunger merely, for I am sure that the man did
feed them as he said. In fact, I have never known
an Eskimo go in to liis own food and rest after a
day's travelling, without first unharnessing and feed-
ing his dogs. It is a custom of the people.

Sometimes the dogs have to work on very poor

food, especially in the springtime, when the reindeer

hunt is over and the seals have not yet come. Then

the dogs have to help in the spring cleaning, if I

may use such an expression ; at any rate, when all

the people have got new reindeer skins for beds it

seems quite the thing to chop the old bed*skins up

for dog-food, and the dogs gulp this queer fodder

down merrily enough if it is moistened with a little

rank oil Two or three meal-times a week is

enough for the sledge dogs; the Eskimos say that

162

SLEDGE DOGS

over-feeding makes them savage. They are un-
pleasant brutes, handsome in their way» but un-
friendly and sly; easily mastered by firmness, but
ready to take advantage of any weakness. I have
known an Eskimo child to be killed by the dogs»
because she met a pack of them when she was alone ;
and a poor woman who fell in a fit was pounced
upon and half devoured before help could arrive.

I was always wary of the dogs, and was very
glad of those tough seal-hide knee-boots to protect
my legs when I stumbled among the sleeping brutes
that filled the porches of the huts. My plan was
to poke them to wide-awakeness with a stick, and
then, with a shout of ** Hu-it " (a very expressive
sort of *' Get out of the way ") march boldly through
them. One evening a man came to my room and
said, *' Shall I shoot my dog? ''

"Why?"

** Because it bit your boot ; and the people have
a rule that a dog which has bitten must be killed."

As the dog had only tasted boot, with which
flAvour it must have been well acquainted, I spared
it ; but if it had tasted me, nothing short of shooting
it would have satisfied the owner.

It is a custom of the people : the dangerous dog
must die.

Kristian was rather Relieved when I acquitted
his dog. I had trodden on its tail in a dark porch,
and its snap at my boot was by way of a natural
response to stimulation. I explained all this to
Kristian. ** Let the dog live," I said.

Kjristian gravely said, " Taimak (so let it be) : it
is my best dog."

168

CHAPTER XII

My Driykiu — ^Two Jonathans — ^My Box — Old Koluck gbts
Caught — A Snow House — ^A Wolf — A Ninety-Mils Tbot —
A Partridge on the Road— My Frozen Nose

AFTER a little experience of Eskimo sledge

j^3^ travelling, I decided that I should get on

better if I chose two men as permanent drives.

So I appointed Julius and Johannes to the position.

Julius is a big, burly fellow, not more than five

feet three or four inches tall, but with a magnificent

pair of shoulders. He must weigh fourteen or

fifteen stone, and can lift almost an3rthing. To see

him hoist my big sledge this way and that, a weight

that I could hardly shift at all, was a constant

delight to me. The big man did it so easily, and

always with the same gentle smile on his broad

face; he never bothered to clench his teeth and

draw deep breaths, he simply lifted things as if they

were nothing. ^' Yes," said I, " that is the man for

me." So Julius became head driver. It was a wise

choice : there was never any trouble while he was in

charge, and the sledge never upset or ran away as

sledges sometimes do.

Johannes is a sort of pocket edition of Julius.

He has the same delightfully happy smile, whatever

there is to do, and the same willing energy; but

the man himself is small and slim, and active as

an eel. Each of these men possesses an Eskimo

surname, and the names just happen to fit them.

154

MY DRIVERS

Julius is called Kak&rsuk, which means '* a little
mountain"; and Julius's weight was a matter of
concern to the dogs. When he sat down on the
sledge they all used to look round to see what the
matter was, and Johannes would laugh and say,
^< No wonder they are surprised : they have to piiU
a mountain now." Julius used to grin at this
pleasantry, and then say with a chuckle, '* Yes, they
don't mind when you jump on, for it is only like
sticking a pin into the sledge " ; Johannes's name is
Merkor&rsuk, which means ** a little needle/' This
was an endless joke on our journeys. If the dogs
were running slowly, it was ** Get off, old mountain,
they can't pull you " ; and if Johannes happened to
feel inclined to trot alongside a little, Julius would
say with a chuckle, '* Your weight doesn't make
any difference, little pin." After these passages
they both used to ruminate over the joke, storing
it up as something good to tell when they got
home.

My drivers soon became firm friends. They even
got as far as calling one another Jonathan. '* Just
tighten that dog's trace, Jonata." ''All right,
Jonata." ''Run in front a little way, Jonata/'
"Ahaila (yes), Jonata," and so on. When we
were making our camp in the woods, Julius some-
times came to me and said, " Where's Jonata ? "

"Over among those trees, I think; he went to
look for water."

Off he would go, to look for Johannes. Mean-
while Johannes might have wandered round and
reached camp from some other quarter. His first
question invariably was, " Where's Jonata ? "

One ni^t, when we were snugly fixed in our

155

TWO JONATHANS

snow hut, I asked them, '^Why do you call each
other Jonata ? "

Julius took a few good puffs at his pipe and
answered ** lUanirdngnermut " (because of friendship).

<*Then why not call yourselves David luul
Jonathan ? " said I ; ** one be David and the other
be Jonathan ? "

** No," said he, ** Jonathan was the friend " ; and
Johannes nodded in approvaL I said no more ; and
Jonathan they both remained as long as I knew
them.

*' Friends " — yes, and my friends, too.

Let me put in a good word for my Eskimo
drivers. v

I have travelled hundreds of miles with those

two men, uphill and down, over mountain passes and

across the rugged surface of the frozen sea ; I have

camped in snow huts with them, [forty miles from the

nearest other human being ; I have taken them from

their homes and their hunting at the shortest notice ;

I have pushed them on when some emergency called

though I knew they would rather rest ; I have kept

them back when they would gladly have made a

start; through winter storms, and worse, through

awful winter rains, we three have gone together;

and never, a cross word, never a complaint, never a

grumble, have I heard from them. Bough Eskimos,

both, fond of raw meat and rancid oil, but capable of

gentleness and affection and absolutely worthy of the

trust I placed in them. It was not all pleasure for

those two men. I have seen them cold and wet

many a time ; I have seen them risk their lives a

time or two ; but they loved those old journeys.

Little Johannes wrote to me a few monUis ago,

156

I Eskimo Slkdgb Doc

> Mm. She mni an ■ '

Id Juliui In Ibeir winter laa. Mo>i imveJIen uke Iwo <l
1 Ihe iledge. the oibei lo drin ihe doii, and u he
dllficuli tuk or building ■ Hiow bi>ii<e for ihe nighl'i i

MY BOX

a queer letter scrawled in pencil on a big sheet of
foolscap. The spelling is weird in places, because he
puts things as they sound to his Eskimo ears.
" Immale/' he writes. ** Oh that we were travelling

Julius was my head driver and looked after the

sledge. Johannes looked after everything else. I

cannot enumerate his duties ; he was on the look-out

for them all day long, and did them as they

cropped up. Amongst other things he elected

himself my ** nurse." That is to say, he was always

on the look-out to make himself useful in some little

personal way. Suppose that one of my boot-strings

came undone. ** No, no," says Johannes, ** uvangale

— ^let me do it — ^keep your gloves on; you have

English hands; they wiU freeze. I have Eskimo

hands." And on the long, weary hours of the dark

evenings, when the dogs toiled slowly on and the

wind nipped painfully, little Johannes was always

near, trotting from one side to the other, racing

forward to disentangle an unlucky dog and coming

back to ask ** Are you cold ? See that rock ? Two

hours to Nain. Anan&k (splendid), ai ? "

On one of those runs through threatening weather

I overheard a little conversation between the drivers.

We were climbing a pass. The two men were

walking beside the nose of the sledge, guiding it

between the rocks, while I followed behind.

** It is heavy up here,** said one ; " I wish we could

go faster."

" Ai-ai,*' said the other. " I wish the doctor's box

could get off and walk."

** Un6t," was the answer ; *' that box is medicine

for the sick folks ; we are helping them."

167

MY BOX

Eskimo drivers always look askance at any
unusual load. They expect to take food and sleep-
ing-bags and a box of clothing ; but to take a big box
besides was something new. Hence their remarks.

I once made my drivers almost protest. W^e
halted for a night at a trading station, and aft^
a pleasant evening in the storekeeper's room the
good man, our host, asked me to take on a small
box for a friend of his at the next post.

'< It is only a small box," he said, ** and will not
take up much room."

I assented willingly, and thought no more of it.

My drivers looked at me rather reproachfully in
the morning when the small box was brought out.
It was ^'only a small box," but it was a box of
gun cartridges, and weighed like lead. They did not
say anything, but I can imagine their thoughts as
the day wore on.

It was a pleasure to travel with the same two
drivers because they got so entirely used to one
another. They worked together like two parts of a
machine.

There are plenty of thrills on a sledge journey,
and coasting downhill is one of them. As soon as
we began to descend, the drivers moved to the front
of the sledge, and sat one on each side. Their main
concern seemed to be to keep the sledge from run-
ning away. They dug their heels into the snow, and
tugged and shoved to keep the track ; and all the
whUe they were yeUing and screaming at the dogs,
which raced on in front in a frightened effort to get
out of the way.

As the pace grew faster the drivers put on the

brakes.

158

OLD KOLLEK GETS CAUGHT

On my very first journey I had noticed two heavy

loops of wahrus hide, tucked under the lashings at

the front of the sledge, and had wondered about

them. I soon knew what they were. Looped over

the front of the sledge runners they make powerful

dra^ One is enough to check tiiie pace on any

ordinary hill, while with two the sledge will stop on

slopes liiat look quite alarming. It is only seldom

that the drivers really let the sledge go, because they

dare not risk a smash over an ice-hummock or a

i^ave of frozen snow.

I have had breathless rushes on some of the

beaten tracks, where the men shout the dogs to one

side, or unfasten them and leave them to follow, and

the sledge whizzes down in a whirl of powdery snow

kicked up by the drivers' heels. There are very few

hills smooth enough for this kind of work. For the

most part the vrinter passes follow the beds of

mountain streams, where jagged rocks and awkward

turns abound. But if the pace is not often thrilling,

the ride is crammed with adventure; and many a

time as I clung to the sledge, bumping and heaving

down the slope, have I marvelled at the skill of my

drivers. The two men think like one, and the sledge

simply obeys them.

Julius, being the stronger man, has the lion's

share of the actual guiding; Johannes is always

ready to run forward to the dogs. ** Kollek, KoUek,"

he would shout, '*keep to the track: keep to the

track, you rascal. Ra-ra-ra-ra, go round that rock 1 "

KoUek was a foolish dog ; his place was the outside

one in the team, and there he would be 1 He did not

seem to like running with the others; and not all

the shouting in the world would bring him into line

159

OLD KOLLEK GETS CAUGHT

if he had made up his doggy mind to straggle.
And round that rock he would not go. Perhaps he
was in a brown study: perhaps he was sulky:
straight on he went, outside dog right enough, but
the wrong side of the rock. Now came the trouble.
Away rushed Johannes to lift the trace over ; but
before he could reach it KoUek was whining and
whistling with terror as the weight of the sledge
drew it tight and dragged him backwards. Poor
dog I he planted his feet as firmly as he could on the
frozen snow, and did his best to withstand the
strain ; but the sledge went calmly on, and KoUek
slithered frantically backwards. In a twinkling he
was plump up against the rock, and then he could go
no fiirther.

There was a twang as of a giant fiddle-string
when the trace broke, and KoUek was free. The
trace trailed limply behind, while the dog scurried
away to his place in the team.

There he trotted, with shoulders forward and nose
down, looking as if he were pulling as hard as the
best dog in the country, but sly old rascal, looking
back every now and again to see if Johannes was
after him with the whip.

I never saw my drivers do much work with the

whip. They always had one with them, but used it

mostly for turning the team. Eskimo dogs are often

disobedient; they sometimes take absolutely no

notice of the orders which the drivers shout at them ;

and when our dogs behaved like that Johannas

would give them a gentle hint by lashing the whip

over the snow. That brought them to their senses I

For a few minutes they would have obeyed a

whisper.

160

A SNOW HOUSE

Another great advantage which I gaine by
-taking the same two drivers on all my journeys, was
-that I never needed to be anxious about a night's
shelter. ''What wUl you do if we cannot reach
Iiome?'' I asked Johannes one afternoon, as we
laboured through the drifting snow in the teeth of
an Arctic storm.

^ Stop and build a snow house/' said he.
^' Will you be able to find good snow in this
weather ? "

''Sua (what)?" said Johannes, with a look of
surprise. "Find good snow? I can always find
good snow.**

Johannes has plenty of faith in himself— and I
have never known him fail He was not bragging ;
he made a matter-of-fact statement, like the thorough
£skimo he is. He succeeds because it is his nature,
and because he alwajrs keeps his eyes open.

Some people are not so happy in their drivers.
One good man set out to travel with two inex-
perienced young Eskimos. When the time came to
build the snow house, they made the alarming dis-
covery that the snow knives had dropped off the
sledge somewhere on the road, and — " Ajomarmat "
(it cannot be helped) said the Eskimos. The traveller
in that instance might have lost his life if he had
not been an unusually carefiil man. He had a little
tent among his travelling paraphernalia. He had
often been teased for " making the dogs drag a tent
around after them," and he confessed that he did not
think he would ever use it. But it saved his life.
As it was, he found it too cold for sleep, and spent
a miserable night shivering in his sealskin sleeping-
bag.

161 L

A SNOW HOUSE

The Eskimo drivers snored peacefully on the
snow floor !

One plucky little Yorkshireman had an even
worse experience. He had snow knives^ hut his
drivers could not find snow hard enough for building.
They dug trenches in the snow, and slept in the
open! Providentially there was no wind, but my
thermometer outside the hospital at Okak, only
thirty nules north, registered sixty degrees of ftost;
SO that one man at least can boast of sleepuig in the
open air at somewhere near that temperature, and
taking no harm. As a rule this sort of experience
is beyond the endurance of a European constitu-
tion.

Johannes was very distressed about it. '*Kap-
pianarmdc" (how awfiil), he said; ''my namesake
sleeps in the open air 1 I wiU go with him when he
travels back to Hopedale, and then he will be sure of
a snow house ! "

On those journeys of mine I got quite used to
seeing Johannes work himself up to snow house pitch.
When the afternoon light began to grow dull, he
pulled out one of the big snow knives that he kept
under the lashings of the sledge. A fearsome-looking
knife it was, with a bone handle and a blade a yard
long. Brandishing this, he trotted from side to side,
prodding here and jabbing there. He was '' finding
snow."

Soon Julius stopped the sledge, and they held a
consultation.

Then the building began. It was generally on a

gently sloping hillside, for there the snow hardens the

best ; and Julius told me that a number of places

are famous among the Eskimos for good hard building

162

A SNOW HOUSE

snow, and travellers do their best to reach one of these
spots for their camping.

When once the place was chosen, my drivers were
soon at work. Each man armed hitnsdf with his
hyge snow knife, and between them they marked a
circle on the snow. Then Johannes retired to the
middle and began to dig. He first made a wedge-
shaped hole to give himself a start ; and then from
the sides of the hole he carved great slabs of the
frozen snow. I judged them to be about six or eight
inches thick, two or three feet long, and eighteen
inches high, and they were nearly as heavy as stone.
Johannes just tumbled them out of his hole as fast as
he could cut them, and as the hole grew I saw that
the slabs were all slightly curved. Julius seized each
slab as it toppled out, and carried it gingerly to the
edge of the circle. He set the slabs on edge, side by
side, and chipped them a little from the top so that
they leaned inwards. He pared away the first few
with his knife so that the lowest ring, when finished,
formed the beginning of a spiral He followed the
spiral up, propping each slab against its neighbour,
and chipping its edge so that it leaned well inward.
Meanwhile Jc^annes got nearer and nearer the wall
with his digging, and his work got harder and harder,
for instead of tumbling the slabs out he had to pick
them up and hand them to Julius over the leaning
walL I thought the wall looked frail and unsafe, but
Julius seemed to think otherwise, for I have often
seen him crawl upon it and lean over to see how
Johannes was getting on inside. As a matter of fact,
his weight only pressed the slabs together a bit more
ftrmly ; and I got so used to it that I have sat placidly

in a snow house while he crawled over the top.

168

A SNOW HOUSE

At Ust the spiral was finished, all but the
'* keystone." Julius sprawled on the side of the
house, while Johannes's hands dioved a big slab
through the opening that still remained at the topw
Julius laid it over the hole, and chipped the edges
away with his knife until it gently dropped into
place, and the building was ready. A scraping and
trampling noise inside was the next thing ; that was
Johannes smoothing the floor. Meanwhile Julius
was filling all the erevices with handfuls of snow.
** Keep the wind out," he said, ** boy*s work, this " ;
from which I gathered that the Eskimo boy learns
to build by filling the crevices with snow as his
father fits the slabs together. '^Yes," said Julius,
<^ and boy has to follow quick, too ; if he gets bdiind,
he's no good. Soon learn quick. Now my boy — "
and Julius was off into an anecdote of his boy*s
quickness.

Soon Johannes was ready to come out. I always
knew when, because he used to light his pipe ; and a
weird and rather pretty sight it was, to see the glow
through the snow walls, with all the joints and
crevices marked out because the snow was softer
there and let the light through. It was generally
dark by the time the house was ready. Johannes's
sword poked out suddenly, and slashed a doorway in
the wall, and the man himself crawled out and miade
straight for the sledge«

Then the dogs began to sit up. They knew that

feeding-time was near. They were usually quiet

while the building was in progress, but the finish of

the work seemed to wake tiiem up. They began to

whine and prowl about, and Julius often had to show

them the whip to keep them in order. They would

A SNOW HOUSE

collect into a bunch and sit on their haunches,
wistfully eyeing the preparations for their supper,
and uttering a queer whistling sound. Julius needed
only to trail tiie whip lash behind him as he walked,
and the dogs nearest to it would slink off to the
dher »de of the group. Meanwhile Johannes was
chopping a frozen seal into fragments. He spread
the pieces (m the snow, and called *^ Taimak '' (ready).

There was a pricking of ears and a lolling of
tongues : Julius quietly moved to one side, and with
a mighty pounce the dogs were on top of their food.
Yelping, snapping, snarling, gulping, the wise ones
bolted the frozen meat, bones and all, as fast as they
could pick it up. Some showed a little more
refinement, but the dog that picked up a chunk and
wandered aside to eat it at leisure got only a poor
share. It was evident that the only way to get
enough was to be quick ; and it was marvellous how
soon that frozen seal was demolished. It was the
work of a few seconds. One of the drivers always
stood by to see fear {day, while the other carried the
load off* the sledge and piled it inside the snow
house.

I was g^ierally cook on these occasions, and by
the time the dogs were fed my kettle was boiling
over a fire made in a hole in the snow, and I was

tr]ring to thaw some bread.

The men did not mind their bread and meat

frozen: ^'ko-ak,'' they called it, and said it was

** anan&k '* (splendid) ; but my teeth would not tackle

it. I used to make blocks of toast, and stuff them

in my pockets, and even then they were usually

frozen in the middle. However, though it was

rather different from dining at a high-class hotel, we

166

A WOLF

got our evening meal, with hunger as sauce ; and we
were glad to lie down and rest

The drivers used to *'make the beds" by
spreading aU the harness on the floor, and covering it
with a bearskin. Then across the middle of the
house they laid my sleeping-bag, and I crawled in.
Last of aU they made a little hole at the top of the
house for ventilation, and blocked up the door, and
we were ready for sleep. I was never cold in a
snow house, for a threefold bag like mine, sealskin,
reindeer skin, and blanket, was as snug as the
warmest of beds: but, oh, the floor I Dogs*
harness may be all very well as a bed ; the Eskimos
used to lie on it without any extra covering, and
snore the snores of the just ; but I rolled from side
to side, vainly trying to find a soft spot, and feeling,
I suppose, very much as the poor princess did in the
fairy story, when she had to sleep with a pea under
the mattress.

On one of these wakeftil nights I heard a terrible
scuffling among the dogs outside. There were con-
stant snarlings and howls, mixed with a most weird
trampling noise.

At last the turmoil came too near for my peace
of mind: scraping, shuffling feet padded over the
snow house, bringing down showers of snow on to
my face. I got rather alarmed.

I woke Johannes — and he took some waking, too.

He rubbed his eyes, and then as the noise dawned

on his ears, " Kingmi&rluit " (those awful dogs), he

said, and shoved his way through the door. There

was a sharp yelp and a brisk scuttering, and then

silence again. Johannes crawled back, and plastered

up the doorway with handfiils of snow.

166

A NINETY-MILE TROT

"A wolf among the dogs," he laconically told
me; ''too much fight, all the time. Fine night:
start soon,*" and he tumbled into his slumbers again.

It was well that those two men could sleep, for
the work they could cram into a day's travelling
astonished me.

I once travelled from Nain to Okak, a distance
of ninety miles, with Julius alone. The snow was
hard, and the dogs in good trim, but the sky looked
threatening. '' No stop," said Julius, and he drove
through the ninety miles without a rest. We stopped
four or five times to disentangle the dogs' traces, but
never for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time ;
and we ate our bread and meat as we ran. I took
my turn with the driving, but Julius bore the brunt
of the work. He chirruped and whistled and cooed
to the dogs as night began to come on, and they
began to whine for a rest ; he ran in front of them
when they began to flag, and landed me in Okak
inside of twenty-two hoiurs. He was as fresh as
paint the next day, and went off on a hunting ex-
pedition of his own.

My drivers did not seem to think it hard work ;
it was all part of their life; it came natiurally to
them.

They used to enjoy the little incidents that came
to vary the wearisome plodding through the snow.
One day we were crossing the Kiglapeits, labouring
through a ravine where the snow lay deep and soft,
when Julius suddenly said ** A-ah."

The dogs lay down very willingly, and I wondered

why the stoppage. Julius held up his hand for

silence, and I saw that Johannes was loading a

gun. I could see no cause for this mysterious

167

A PARTRroGE ON THE ROAD

busiiiess, but I did not want to spoil sport by
speaking: so I contented myself by wishing that
I had Eskimo eyes for the time bdng. Johannes
handed the gun to Julius. He raised it to his shoulder
and fired.

Then I saw a fluttering in the snow, not &ve
yards away : a tittle red stain broke out, and some-
thing red and white rolled down the hank towards
us. Julius's hand was up fw silence again, and
the gun went to his shoulder.

Another bang, another stain, another something
rolling.

Then I saw two partridges, white as the snow
on which they were walking. They Iodised from
side to side in a dazed manner ; walked a few st^ps,
and then took wing and flew leisurely over the
bank out of si^t. Perhaps they had never seen
a man before, or a dog, for that matter; and pro-
bably our dogs were too hard at work to notice
them; and so the sledge was close beside them
before we knew it.

Julius picked up the two he had shot, and tucked
them under the bearskin at the front of the sledge.
'^We shall have a fine supper to-ni^t," he said;
and then, with a great roar of ** Hu-it " to the dogs,
he drove on.

Once it was the tracks of reindeer that crossed
our path. We stopped, and the drivers had a
consultation.

'^ Hu-it," they said, and on went the dogs.

Johannes looked wistfully at the reindeer tracks

as we left th»ti. ** Twelve hours okl," he said,

** gcme a long way now. No good," and he filled

his stumpy pipe to solace him.

168

MY FROZEN NOSE

Johannes was a man of resource. I used to enjoy
^watching him find water. He seemed to know
exactly where every stream ought to be, for he never
hesitated. He took a snow knife, and plunged it
into the snow up to the hilt. Then ne drew it out
swiftly, and looked at the blade. It was wet ! He
had found water, and soon had dug a hole and was
ladling out mugfuls for everybody's benefit. He
did not always strike water at the first plunge, but
never seemed to need more than two or three.

I had an example of his resourcefulness when my
nose froze. It was a cold, dull day, and we were
running against the wind. Suddenly Johannes
stooped md gathered a handful of snow. He plumped
down beside me on the sledge, seized me round the
nedgi, and rubbed my nose vigcnrously with his snow-
ball. I remember that I spluttered considerably, and
Julius looked round with a grin. Johannes's &cg
was all solicitude. ** Your nose is fixxEcn," he said,
*^your nose is frozen;" and he rubbed and rubbed
until he was satisfied that the life had come back into
it — and so Johannes saved my nose.

169

CHAPTER XIII

A Run to Nain — ^A Camping Accident — ^A Summons Home —
Singing us Off — Into the Storm — Lost on the Mountatn —
On the Edge of a Precipice— -Juuus to the Rescue — An
Uncomfortable Night.

I SUPPOSE that all Eskimo drivers are much
of a muchness, and the reason why I found my
two men such excellent fellows was that we got so
used to one another. But I have never seen so good
a path-finder as little Johannes, and I could not help
thinking of him a time or two on one of the very
few journeys I made without him. Johannes could
not come ; his wife was ill, and it seemed unreason-
able to ask him to leave her. I think that big Julius
was as much concerned as I, for when I told him to
choose a new companion for the trip to Nain he
hummed and hawed, and took more than a day to
make a choice. Finally he came along leading his
cousin Kristian, a big, burly young man, and told me
that this was '^aipara" (my other one). This was
Kristian's fiirst trip as driver to a European, and he
evidently felt flattered ; at any rate, he worked like a
Trojan in spite of his reputation for laziness, and his
gift for managing dogs was truly marvellous. In
our snow house on the mountain pass Kristian
became reminiscent. That is one of the strangest
of tacks for an Eskimo to take, but I suppose the
unaccustomed luxury of half frozen tinned mutton

and three parts frozen bread, washed down with tea

170

A CAMPING ACCIDENT

which was boiling at the beginning of the meal and

scummed with ice before the end, was sufficient

^o jog Kristian's memory of the last long sledge

trip that he had made. He was a boy at the time,

and was doing the boy's work of filling the crevices

in the snow house widl after the builder, while his

father, old Abia of Okak, kept the dogs in order by

flicking the whip to and fro. Kristian struck his

knife in the snow house wall, and just at that

moment Abia lashed out at a quarrelsome dog. The

lash, as it came twirling back for the stroke, wrapped

itsdf round the knife and hurled it straight at Abia.

He thought that the whip had struck him, and took

no more notice until a queer faintness and the sight

of blood trickling over his boot made him put

his hand to his back — and find the knife. The man

in the snow house heard his cries, and came running

to see what was wrong. Kristian had forgotten the

name of that man, but he must have been a cool

customer, for he set about a piece of marvellous

emagency surgery. He cut a thread of hide from

the harness of one of the dogs, and, using a spike of

bone for a needle, he sewed up the wound and

stopped the bleeding. Abia got over both the

injury and the rough surgery, for I knew him as

an old man of seventy-seven, a great age for an

Eskimo.

I had only been a few days in Nain when a

solitary Eskimo arrived from Okak with a note from

my wife, whom I had left in charge of the hospital

"A boy has been brought in with a compound

fracture. If you can come at once you may save

his 1^." The messenger was almost worn out:

he had hurried on night and day, as Eskimos do

171

A SUMMONS HOME

when a life is at stake, and his pow little team of
seven dogs sprawled upon the snow, as weary as
he. I called Julius. '<We must start home at
once," I told him. <' No good,"* said he, *' we have
just fed the dogs." I knew what that meant :
sledge dogs get a meal every two days, anfi gorge
themselves so that they can hardly move. ^But
we must go : Ixmtow dogs, leave the sleepiest behind :
we must go." Julius w^it off without a word.
Presently Kristian came. ** Are we going to start ?
Lode, bad storm coming," and he pointed towards
the north. ^' Never mind, Kristian, we must go."
'< Ahaila,*' said Kristian, and went to help Julius
harness the dogs.

News soon spreads, and the whole village turned
out to see the start. As I walked down to take
my place on the sledge the old Eskimo schoolmaster
laid his hand on my sleeve. '< Don't go," he said,
'' you will all be lost Don't go."

His concern was real, so I called my drivers.
"What do you say?" I asked them. **Are you
willing to go ? "

" male " (of course), they said. '< Ready," said
I, " go ahead." The dogs slowly raised th^nselves
on their legs, and whined as they trotted along the
bumpy path towards the sea-ice; and the heavy
wrack of the northem storm came bowling al<»ig
to meet us. **Aksuse," shouted the people, "be
strong," and we waved our hands and shouted back.
Then they b^^ to sing.

There is a lump in my throat and a mist in my
eyes even now, when I think of that scene : just
a crowd of rough Eskimos, people whose grand-
fathers had been heathen and wild, singing a hymn

178

SINGING US OFF

of God-speed as we set out on our dangerous
errand.

^ TakkotigSl&rminiptingnut
Gfide illagiliaetdk "^

they sang, and the ehanningiy balanced harmony
came fainter and ever fainter as the wind began
to sigh about us and the snow to beat on our
faces. '^ Grod be with you tiU we meet again " — and
we settled confidently to our task.

That was the quietest day I have ever spent
on a dog-sledge. There was none of the chatter
and banter to which we were used ; there was work
for us all to do, and we did it seriously, and all
the time the drivers chewed pensively at their
battered tobacco pipes and said nothing.

It. was slow going until the dogs had got over
thdr feed, but towards evening the pace improved
and we made our usual six or seven miles an hour
in spite of the storm. As oftoi as the dogs got
tangled up Julius straightened their traces without
stopping the sledge. I had heard tell of this feat,
and so was very much interested when he set
about it; but I thought it a very risky piece of
acrobatic work. He pulled the team badic dose
to the sledge, so as to get the frozen knot in the
hauling line within reach of his teeth. The dogs,
of course, thought they were going to be thrashed,
and tug^fed and galloped most frantically, so that
the man had hard work to hold them.

We should have been in a pretty plight if they

had got away, for they would have turned in their

tracks and gone back to Nain, and we should have

been left to walk. However, Julius tied the line

ITS

INTO THE STORM

to one 1^, and chewed the knot loose; then he
slipped the traces off one by one and looped them
over his other leg, so that all through the per-
formance it was a case of seventeen dogs harnessed
to Julius's legs, while he sat tight and made the
sledge come along with him. My heart was in
my mouth until the risky business was over. All
day long I sat on the sledge with my back to the
wind, and wondered how the drivers were finding
the way. It was evening before I got any inkling
of our whereabouts, and then the way led us
uphill, and I knew that we had left the sea-ice
and were on the land. There followed a cold and
dreary hour of bumping and jolting ovw rocks
and up sudden little cliffs, while the m^i were
constantly out of sight in the storm : then Kristian's
voice said '^A-ah, ah,'' and the dogsl stopped
'^ Stopped" is hardly expressive enough: at the
word their legs seemed to collapse under them,
and they curled themselves up where they dropped.

I confess to a feeling of loneliness as I stood
beside the sledge, with the snow driving silently past
and nothing to see at all but the dim outlines of the
dogs as they curled roimd and went to sleep. The
occasional moan of the wind made things worse : the
drivers had vanished into the gloom, and I seemed
to be alone on the mountain. But a ghostly form
loomed up, and big Julius, like the thoughtful
fellow he is, had a word of encouragement to say.
" We shall build a snow house here."

Do you know where we are ? " I asked him.

On the proper sledge-track over Kiglapeit, of
course," he said; and his tone sounded rather
surprised, as if it were a preposterous idea that we

INTO THE STORM

could possibly be off the track. The snow swallowed
up again, but somehow I felt less chiUy for his

Happily we had stopped close to a straggling bush,

so I was able to cut some twigs for a fire without

any risk of losing myself. I lit my fibre in a niche of

t\xe rock, and put on a kettlefiil of snow, and then

st^amped up and down to get a little warmth into me.

On my way to the snow house I trod on what looked

like a mound of snow in the river bed. The mound

^ot up and yelped, and I saw that I was among the

dogs. They were peacefully blanketed by the snow,

content to remain buried untU the drivers woke them

up in the morning. Of supper they had no thought,

for they had not got over their breakfast by any

means. The one I had trodden on settled down

again as soon as he found that the disturbance was

neither the signal for work nor the beginning of a

fight, and in a few moments he was, to all intents

and purposes, a snow-covered stone as before. I

picked my way carefully among the others, mindful

of my precious kettle, and struggled through the low

doorway into the snow house. That particular snow

house was the smallest I have ever had, for the men

had no time to waste over comfort ; shelter was all

we wanted. They gave me the longest diameter,

but I had to draw my knees up to lie down at all, and

the uncomfortable cramped attitude would have

been enough to drive sleep away even if I had not

suffered the added annoyance of a sleeping-bag

partly filled with snow. Imagine taking off your

sodden boots, and poking yoxki stockinged feet into

what ought to be the snug warmth of a thick,

blanket-lined sealskin bag, only to meet an icy mass

176

INTO THE STORM

of snow I Ugfal I crawled down head first and
scnped the most of it out ; but the bag was damp
and cbunmy, and it took me half the night to thaw
it to a ocHnfwtable waimth. A pint mug of hot tea
is a wonderful help at a time like that, ev^i if the
water is smoky and clouded with grits ; and we used
to fold our hands and ** say grace *' foe those rough
meals with real thankfulness. But ohl for an
Eskimo ecMistitution for sledge travellii^. After this
tear-supper of ours Julius and Kristian lay down to
rest They had no sleeping-bags; they spread the
dogs' harness under Ihem so as not to be actually on
the snow, and piUowed their heads on their arms.
They had to bend their bodies to fit the curve <^ the
wall, but before many minutes had passed I heard
great snores from each side of me. I must have
dooed towards morning, for I sudd^y felt some-
body shaking me and poking a mug of tea into my
hand. The men had left me to sleep whUe they
harnessed the dogs and made the Inreakfast, and I
blessed the kindness that spared me the usual long
shivery time of waiting.

The weather was worse than ever, but the men
were quite cheerful about it, although th^ must
have known that we had a thoroughly dangerous
task in front of us. To-day we must cross the
summit of the Kiglapeit mountains, with a MinHi?ig
snowstorm beating in our faces. But the Eskimos
were in their element, and at times like. these they
seem unable to be faint-hearted.

Off we went into the storm, and the sledge-runners

groaned as they ploughed heavily through the soft

snow. For ten or twdve miles the going was plain ;

our track followed the course of a frosien torrent,

176

LOST ON THE MOUNTAIN

between hi^ banks, and the dogs had no difficulty
in picking their way ; but when we got on to the lake
at the top of the pass the trouble began. The wind
"WBs blowing in a circle, and gave us no guidance at
all ; and to me it seemed that we were on an open
plain of snow, enclosed by whirling walls of white.
I could see nothing but the snow slipping past
us as the sledge drove steadily on. Julius sat with
set face, continually crying *'Hu-it, hu-it" (go
straight on, go straight on) to the dogs, hoping by
this means to hit the track again on the other side of
the lake. An hour slipped by and still there was
no land, so we stopped the sledge for a confer-
ence. '^ Ajomarmat " (it cannot be helped), said the
drivers ; ^* it is useless to look for landmarks, for we
are still on the lake. We must just drive on and
hope." We seemed to be travelling fast, for the
dogs had got over their food of yesterday and were
frisky and full of energy ; but it was a very blindfold
sort of work, and I think it was a relief to us all to
feel the grind of rock under the runners, and to have
the sensation of going uphill again. We were across
the lake, though where, and how far from our
course, we could not tell. The nose of the sledge
pointed up and up, and then suddenly dipped: we
were over the ridge on the summit of the Kiglapeit
mountains, and the men were slipping the heavy
walrus-hide drags over the nose of each runner in
readiness for the slide downhill. The sledge began
to gather way, and I took a good grip of the lashings
and braced myself to withstand the jolts, for to fall
off meant certain disaster. Suddenly a cloud of
powdery snow hissed up as the drags bit the road

under the runners, and I was flung violently back-

177 H

ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE

wards against my travelling box. As I fell I had a

glimpse of the drivers leaning heavily back, with

heels dug into the snow, straining their utmost to

stop the sledge. The whining, frightened dogs were

all about us. Julius turned the sledge bodily upside

down, to prevent the dogs from running away with

it, and then, as I came forward to speak to him, he

held up a warning hand. His laconic <*Ajorkok"

(it cannot be done) was enough; I knew that we

had missed the channel that runs between the

shoulders of the summit, and were on the very brink

of a slope that runs steeper and ever steeper to end

in a sheer precipice, down which we might have

fallen headlong. There was a tight feeUng in my

throat as I drew back from the giddy depth of

whirling snowflakes and joined the drivers where

they stood by the sledge. It had been a narrow

escape. "We must go back,** said Julius. "No,"

said Kristian, " a Uttle further to the left we can get

safely down : it is too slow to go back." " Oukagle "

(but no), said Julius. "Ahailale" (but yes), said

Kristian; and it looked like the beginning of a

quarreL They appealed to me. " Go back," I said.

Kristian heaved the sledge round, and Julius

trotted over the sledge crest again, calling " Ha, ha,

ha " to the dogs. For a long time I saw no more of

him, and more than once Kristian said, " We ought

to have gone to the left ; too slow, this.** Even the

dogs were out of sight ; I could see the long trace

slipping over the snow, with now and again a glimpse

of the tangled, knotted mass of lines that led away to

the dogs. The lines were always tight, and I knew

by that that Julius was somewhere ahead, and the

dogs were following him. Suddenly he appeared,

178

JULIUS TO THE RESCUE

looking a real snow man. ** Here is the track/' he
announced, and flung himself heavily on to the sledge
and began to charge his pipe. Now the dogs ran
yelping on, and the sledge raced after them down the
slope. The drags were on, but the way was safe, for
we had recognised the passage between two rocks
which marked the beginning of the descent to the sea-
ice, and we drove on with perfect confidence. We
reached the ice late in the afternoon, and found the
wind blowing straight from the north. This was a
help, for it gave us our course across the bay ; but
the dogs refused to face it, and kept edging away to
one side or the other, so that once more we had to
rely on the willing Julius. On he trotted, right in
the teeth of the wind, with the dogs scampering
close on his heels. When for a while we skirted the
land he came back to the sledge for a rest and a
smoke, but in the open he dived into the storm
again, and led the dogs on with tales of seals and
foxes and a house to rest in. At last his words came
true. '< Iglo, iglo '' (a house, a house), he yelled, and
stood to let the dogs race by. As he jumped on to
the sledge he said '^A house; sleep here," and the
sledge drew up with a biunp and a rattle at the door
of one of the craziest shacks that it has been my lot to
see. The door was off its hinges, if it ever had any,
and the doorway was choked with snow; but we
dug our way in with hands and snow knives. There
was a rusty iron stove without a pipe, but we filled
it with damp twigs and lit it with a stump of candle,
and sat in the horrible reek. We were warm, and we
could dry our clothes, even if we were choked. At first
it was too awful for me, and even the Eskimos grinned

at it; but when we got the fire nice and hot, and

179

AN UNCOMFORTABLE NIGHT

turned the back of the stove to the docMrway, we got
something better, and we hung our boots frcmi the
rafters and sat down to our toasted but rather frost-
bitten bread and mutton with quite a feeling of
luxury.

But oh, that nig^t! The Eskimos thought we
were in for a real treat ; there was actually a platform
bed of moss, as dry as we could wish ; and we lay
down upon it side by side. Soon I heard the usual
snores, but I — well, I was in the hands or daws or
jaws of creatures left by previous occupants of that
bed. There are no fleas in Labrador, but there are
things that bite as hard. I will not try to give their
scientific name, for I never saw them : they just bit
and fled. I will not prolong the memory of that
night: suffice it to say that I was glad to see the
morning. The storm had gone : we could see our
landmarks, and the only disadvantage was soft snow
knee deep, through which the dogs slowly wallowed.
I was worn out. The end of our journey is prosaic
enough, after the excitement of yesterday, but, be the
fact prosaic or not, I knew that there was work wait-
ing for me ; so I got into my sleeping-bag, and the
drivers laid me on the sledge and tucked me snugly
in, and there I slept. I woke late in the afternoon
to the shout of ** Kemmutsit '' (the sledge), and as I
raised my head I saw the Okak people running
out to welcome us home.

180

CHAPTER XIV

A Drowning Accident — A Breakdown on the Mountain —
Johannes in a Storm — Crossing a Crevice

ODDLY enough) a drowning accident was the
cause of my next sledge journey. The message
came, as Labrador messages do, sudden and terse,
carried by two stolid men post haste over the hills
as soon as the ice was firm enough for them to traveL
There had been a drowning accident in November,
wrote the superintendent ; would I go and teach the
people life-saving drill? The messengers were be-
sieged with anxious questions, and from their laconic
answers I pieced together the story of the mishap.
It appears that a strong storm was blowing, and
some of the men home from the seal-hunt saw their
big boat beginning to drag its anchor. Absorbed by
the idea of saving their boat, four of them put off
from the beach in a little flat-bottomed punt; and
after a short battle with the waves over they went.
Eskimos are no swimmers; they are more used to
ice than water ; and it is no wonder that the poor
feUows made but a feeble fight against the stormy
sea. One of them was floundering face downwards
when a big wave caught him and cast him on a
boidder, where he sprawled, gasping and half choked :
the other three had never a chance, and their bodies
were washed up on the beach half-an-hour later.
A plucky little Eskimo put out in a punt and

managed to save the man on the boulder at the risk

181

A DROWNING ACCIDENT

of his life, nmnaging somehow to keep the punt
afloat and tow the drowning man into safety, and
that is the end of the story. My drivers entered
very heartily into the idea of another journey to
Nain, and started my sledge on a raw February
morning with characteristic determination and energy.
But they were beaten for once : the snow fell thicks
and thicker as we went along, and after doing ten
miles they stopped and offered me my choice be-
tween camping and turning back. As for them-
selves, I know that they would certainly have
camped ; but, as usual, they left the decision to me,
and I argued the question out for myself while they
waited. They would have felt just as much at home
in a snow hut as anywhere else, and frozen food
would have suited them perfectly ; but the European
constitution finds it a terrible trial to live in a freez-
ing atmosphere without warmth of any sort, and I
knew very well that my teeth and digestion would
both fail if I gave them nothing but blocks of frozen
meat and slabs of stone*hard bread to work upon, so
I chose to go back. So it comes about that I cannot
give a vivid description of weary days and nights
spent shivering in a little snow bee-hive with the
storm whurling noisily outside, but instead I can
look back with thankfulness, and record how I was
spared that most awful of Labrador experiences.
Others that I know have had it to endure— quiet,
lion-hearted missionaries, or brave, hardy settler
men — ^and they point to a limp, or a frosted hand
or foot, as a memento of the time.

« Go back," I said.

Julius swung the sledge round with never a

word, and Johannes straightened the harness and

l8St

A BREAKDOWN ON THE MOUNTAIN

shouted the bedraggled dogs into movement again.
He sat by me on the sledge, and thumped my
shoulders to shake off the snow» and shouted in my
ear ** Going back is best for you : you would only
fre eze out here/'

After that the two drivers sat like solid men of
snow, and only came to life when their pipes wanted
filling or when the dogs threatened to stop. The
sledge toiled slowly on, creaking and groaning
through the soft new snow, and the dogs seemed to
be finding the way for themsdves. I was mystified
untilJohannes told me that we were on the wood
track. << Dogs come this far every day," he shouted ;
''they know the road." It was a wearisome kind
of travelling, with nothing to be seen but a whirl of
snowflakes, and nothing to vary the monotony : the
drivers sat still and puffed, and I sat still and
shivered.

After we had crossed the last neck of land before
Okak Bay, we ran into fine weather, and no doubt
the village was rather surprised to see us back so
soon. The people came running over the ice to
meet us, fearing that something had gone wrong,
and shouting in alarm; but the first sight of the
three of us all heaped with snow must have been
enough to tell them what things were like behind
the hill, and no doubt the drivers had plenty to say
over the pipes during the evening.

Three days later we made another start, when

the storm had blown itself out, and found very little

of the snowfall of the previous days : the wind had

swept it away and banked it into huge drifts among

the trees, so that our road upon the frozen sea was

none the worse. But though our first day's run was a

188

A BREAKDOWN ON THE MOUNTAIN

good one, and we were able to build our snow house
on the summit of the Kiglapeit Pass, half way to
Nain, there was sufficient excitement in the second
day to make the trip a memorable (me.

The Eskimos say that there is always wind in
the mountains, but on that second morning the
wind was much too strong for comfort, though the
men assured me that it was quite safe to travel
But the mountain stream, which is the winter road,
was clear of snow, and the dogs could not keep their
feet upon it. Each puff of wind sent them riddding
about, howling with terror, and the sure-footed little
Johannes was kept hard at work lifting the traces
OTer rocks and points of ice while the heavy sledge
came bowling after him.

Things were even worse with the sledge. Julius
and I were clinging to it, trjring to keep its nose
to the front, but the gusts swirled it hither and
thither and flung us from side to side like corks.
At last we came to a frozen waterfiedl, and the dogs
took to the bank. Julius tugged and strained and
put forth all his strength and cunning, but the ice
was like glass and the sledge would not turn; the
runners could get no grip upon the sUppery surface,
and we were helpless in front of the wind.

After a short few moments of anxious clinging
we came up against a boulder, and over we went
with a crash. I remember quite well that as I was
flung from my hold on the sledge and went sliding
down the frozen river I heard Johannes's voice from
the bank shouting '' Ah — ah — ah '* to make the dogs
lie down.

I picked mjrself up and made my precarious way

to the sledge by clinging to the boulders — ^it was

184

A BREAKDOWN ON THE MOUNTAIN

impossible to walk in the ordinary way because of
the wind whistling down stream — and found the
drivers holding a palaver over a smashed runner.
They displayed no con^eroation at our plight, and
had very little to say ; at times Uke that the Eskimo
is a man of action, and it seemed quite natural that
with a short grunt of explanation little Johannes
pulled an axe from among the load firmly lashed to
the upturned sledge and trotted off on an errand
of his own.

Meanwhile, Julius was looking for his gun, which
he had tucked along the floor of my travelling box,
and I was amazed to see him load it and start firing
at the broken runner. He was using great bullets
that he had most likely intended for reindeer, and
the effect of each shot was to bore a good-sized hole
in the wood. He placed eight of them at intervals
along the runner, some near the top and some near
the bottom, and then coolly poUshed out his gun
with a wad of tow and made it fast on the sledge
again.

By this time Johannes was in sight on the river
bank, carr3ring a long, thin tree over his shoulder ;
and Julius set to work to find a spare length of
seal-hide trace somewhere among his travelling
equipment If only the crash had not jarred my
camera open, and fogged every one of the plates, I
should have had a series of unique pictures of the
sledge-mending; as it was, I was sufficiently fasci-
nated to forget the February cold while I stood and
watched those two Eskimos at work. They chopped
the tree to the proper length, and flattened it a little
on one side; then they threaded the line through

the shot holes and bound the tree to the broken

186

JOHANNES IN A STORM

runner. '*Taimak" (that will do), they said» and
moved away to get the dogs ready. In a few
minutes they were lighting their pipes for another
start, and we bumped and slid and twisted down
the river as if nothing had happened. I noticed
that Julius kept the sound runner towards the
boulders, as if he hardly eared to put the patched
one to any strain, but we jolted over the ridges and
raced down the slopes in quite an ordinary way, and
made the descent of the pass to the sea-ice in average
time.

For an hour or two after leaving the mountains
we enjoyed fine weather, but as the afternoon wore
on and the sim sank the wind began to follow us
again. The air had a queer threatening chill in it ;
little eddies of snow came whirling along the floor,
whisking roimd us and poking up our sleeves and
down our necks, and the dogs dropped their tails
and huddled together and whined as they ran.
Within half-an*hour we were in the thick of the
drift, and I found that running before a storm is
no more pleasant than facing it. Johannes, who
was sitting by me, pulled his sealskin dicky over
him, and shouted ** Ananaulungitok-ai " (this is not
nice), and I shouted my <* Ahaila '' back at him with
some little apprehension; I knew that it is some-
thing out of the ordinary that makes an Eskimo
driver put on sealskins over his blanket and calico,
but the men always had a word of explanation for
me. " All right," shouted Johannes, ** very cold now :
get to Nain soon," and then he turned his back to
the wind, and sat drumming on the runners with
his feet to let the dogs think that the driver had

his eye on them. As a matter of &ct the dogs

186

JOHANNES IN A STORM

i^ere out of sight ; I could hear no sound of them

above the roaring of the wind, and there was

nothing to be seen but the main hauling trace

quivering away into the drift and the white floor

slipping past.

As long as daylight lasted I could understand

how the drivers found the way, because all the flying

snow seemed to be whipped up from the floor, and

in the occasional lulls of the wind we caught sight of

the clifis and mountainii alongside of us. In fact,

when the sledge rose up to cross a neck of land we

gradually drew above the drift, and could look back

and see the sea-ice covered with a rushing cloud of

powdery snow that seemed like driven smoke. But

when night fell, and the storm roared louder, I began

to wonder how we should fare. The dogs were tiring,

and would not turn ; they wanted the storm behind

them ; and when all landmarks were swallowed up in

the drift and the darkness, and there was nothing for

me to see but an occasional glimpse of the stars or

the dull glow of the drivers' pipes as they stuffed the

tobacco down with their tiiumbs, little Johannes

pulled off his sealskin dicky — ^and I knew that he

was going to run ahead. ^* Sit on the sledge, or you

will get lost," he yelled, and trotted into the dark.

It seemed hours before I saw him again, and then I

suddenly found him beside me. *^ Are you cold ? " he

shouted, and slipped off the sledge again to join Julius

where he was wrestling, with hands and teeth, with

the frozen and tangled traces. I hardly knew that

the sledge had stopped, but presently Johannes ran

off again, and there was a mighty jerk as the dogs

got up to follow him. The next stop was dramatic.

Miles and miles we seemed to have run, when sud-

187

JOHANNES IN A STORM

denly the sledge went grinding over pebbles, and I
heard Julius's big voice roaring '' Ah." I ran forward,
and found that we had stopped close to a huge
boulder, about the size of a cottage. Johannes ap-
peared from the darkness ahead, and said, with a
jerk of his thumb towards the boulder, '< We ought
to be on the other side of that." ** lUale " (certainly),
answered Julius, and swung the nose of the sledge
round. ** Ha-harha " piped Johannes, and the dogs
went after him round the boulder. I could see very
little £rom my seat at the back of the sledge ; even
Julius, a few feet in front of me, was no more than a
sUent shape, a sort of petrified man; though 1 had
evidence that he was very wide awake by his sudden
lurches and heaves, and the kicks that he gave to the
snow, when the sledge needed turning to one side or
the other ; and that his keen eyes were wide open in
the dark I knew by the alacrity with which he sud-
denly jumped off and hauled the sledge to one side
to keep the runner from slipping into a crack. Apart
from these little outbursts of energy he seemed well
content to sit still and chew his pipe, with his back
to the wind and his feet dangling close to the floor.
He certainly did not seem to be suffering from cold
toes, and if I had remarked upon the fact he would
probably have said '* Ahaila, I am an Eskimo.'*

As for myself, I could find no pleasure in sitting
stock still ; I wanted to run for warmth, but running
was an impossibility because of the unevenness of the
snow. The Eskimo has a high-stepping gait that
serves him very well over rough snow in the dark,
but it is not an easy gait to leam, and only those
bred on the Labrador manage it. For me it was a
case of '* sit still," as Johannes had said ; so the next

188

The Unwilling Puppy

Tbc paprta naive Ibeir InEning at lbs bindi of the Eilciino bori, wbo bmmisi ibi
CDDpe] lh«n Ed dnf imall iledgn or bloclca or iix. The puppid rescnE this tnAtmcl
pitoou bovlt uid ft moil nfgrAvftCtEig uubbomneB, but itficr ii fev dayi tb«y ft
prgpor hablu.

A Slbikib Party

drii«r nopt thui and undoes th« knot with tail

JOHANNES IN A STORM

time the sledge stopped I got the polar bear's skin
that was lashed over the load, and wrapped myself in
that for warmth. The little man from ahead had his
usual word of encouragement for me : ** Nain in one
hour/* he said ; ** no more stops/' " However will
you find Nain ? " I asked him. He waited until the
next lull in the wind, and pointed upwards. ** Do
you see that bright star ? " he said ; ** that star is right
over Nain : the people say that if it were to fall it
would fall on the village : we go under that star *' —
and away he went, and I felt the jerk as the sledge
started after him. Sure enough, in one hour we raced
up the slope to the village of Nain, and the dogs roused
the people out of their houses with their yelping.

No doubt Johannes gave me what seemed to
him the proper explanation of his method of finding
the way in the dark of the storm ; he was steering by
the star ; but I think that he hardly explained the
marvellous gift of finding the way that Eskimos have.
In blinding snowstorms, and in black darkness under
cloudy skies, they go from point to point, silent and
self-possessed, knowing places by the dimmest gUmpse
of some headland or the merest outline of a rock
peering through the gloom. More than once I have
travelled with them when my eyes could see nothing
at all, nothing but driving snow, and they have trotted
on without the least hesitation or uneasmess, abso-
lutely certain that they would '' get there." It seems
to me Uke a sixth sense — ^the sense of direction — ^the
same sense that animals display.

On our way home from Nain we passed the big

boulder. It lay on the frozen beach, at the foot of

a jutting point : on each side there stretched a wide

bay. We had crossed the northern bay in the drift,

189

JOHANNES IN A STORM

and had found the boulder after the crossmg, only
we had tried to pass on the hindward side of it, where
the wind had swept a path clear of snow and strewn
with the beach pebbles. I wondered how we had
managed to hit it at all ; but as we passed it that
morning in the clear winter sunshine Johannes gave
a shrug, and said ** I got on the wrong side of that 1 "

Partly, I suppose, his remark was an expression
of the scrupulous exactness of the Eskimo mind —
the same exactness that is seen in the little models of
sledges and canoes that the men make in their spare
time : every bit of the innermost working, however
hidden it may be from sight, is an exact reproduction
of the real thing; the natural tendency of the
Eskimo is to be thorough.

Partly it showed Johannes's simple fSEuth in his
own gifts as a guide — ^no brag ; utter simplicity.

No one is more careful than an Eskimo sledge-
driver, and the quiet watchfulness to avoid every
hindrance, and to steer clear of every danger, is part of
his nature. No wonder that the driver is always on the
move. No chance droppings from the dogs must
soil the bright runners, or the sledge will run heavily,
so off the driver jumps and heaves the big sledge
around ; every crevice must be crossed squarely, so
that there is no risk of the runners slipping down ;
there must be no needless bumping over hummoeks
or frozen waves of snow, and when there must needs
be bumps the men use their strength to let the sledge
fall gently ; and so it comes about that sledge travel-
ling with Eskimo drivers is as safe as sledge travelling
can be.

On the way home from one of our journeys in

the springtime, we found that the tides had played

190

CROSSING A CREVICE

havoc with the ice ; a crack four or five feet wide lay
across the track, and there seemed to be no way of
g^etting round it ** We must go across/' said the men.
The first thing was to fling or shove the dogs into
the water one by one ; they made a great to-do about
it, but the drivers pushed them all in, and the terrified
creatures were soon shaking themselves on the other
side. The next thing was to push the sledge along
until the front of it bridged the crack and the runners
xv^ere touching the other side ; then with a great howl
of '' Hu-it *' big Julius started the dogs and we all
jumped on to the sledge as it careered safely over.
Then the drivers turned and looked at one another,
and laughed ; it was, to them, a spice of excitement
in the monotony of sledge travel.

191

CHAPTER XV

Danikl — A Hundred Milks in an Open Boat — ^Daniel
A8 Coos — ^Daniel's House — The old Widow

A FTER the bustle of winter sledge travel, the
Xx ^uly days of July seemed to me the dreariest
time of the whole year. The ice on the bay was
broken, and the water was packed close with the
floating pieces. It seemed a dreary time, because we
were so shut in ; no sledges, no boats, no exercise but
walks on the sloppy beach or the softening snow on
the hills. Most of the people had gone to their
sealing camps, and the few who were left in the
village had turned their sledges upside down on the
roofs of their houses and were busy at the tarring of
their wooden boats, waiting eagerly for the ice to
float away and leave the water clear for them. And
yet it was on a July day in 1905 that there came
the excitement of a shout of ''Umiat, umiat" (a
boat).

It had nearly reached the jetty before we saw it,
a big white boat with a crew of four sturdy Eskimos,
who poled their precarious way between the ice-
pans ; and when the Okak people saw the faces of the
men they gave a great shout of '' Nainemiut " (Nain
people).

I met the four men as they trotted up the jetty,

and found, as I had expected, that it was an urgent

call that had brought them across a hundred miles of

ice-packed sea at a time of year when the Eskimos

19S

Thb Author in TRAvsLLma Costume

tn wlikin from hud In tool, wlih an Dndcf.iuil of blankti. Tlia but of tlM L>b»(
ba| bcbind ii ■!» ^ Ki)<liin, with i double lining of reindnr ikia and blin

DANIEL

are wont to say about traveUing ** Ajorkok " (it cannot
be done).

But the boatmen had very little to say about their
trip ; all they wanted was tliat I should find a fifth
man, so that they might rest by turns from the
rowing — ** Okiunaidlarpok-iUa '' (very hard work).
So I surveyed the village in my mind's eye, search-
ing for a likely boatman among the few who had not
gone to the seal-hunt. And I thought of Daniel.

I knew Daniel as a good and handy workman, so
I sent for him. Soon he came shyly in — ^a short,
square man with a broad back and muscular limbs,
and, above all, a willing^ good-natured face. He
seemed to have discarded his characteristic *^ dicky,"
and was in his summer costume of an ancient jersey,
left him, no doubt, by some fisherman from New-
foundland ; and he stood waiting, with the expectant
air that he always wore when there was work to be
done.

^' Are you ready to start for Nain at six o'clock
to-morrow morning ? ^

** Yes," said Daniel, without a moment's hesita-
tion, and no more perturbed than if I had asked him
to do one of the everyday things at which he is so
handy. ** Ahaila," he repeated, and turned and went
home.

When I walked down the jetty in the morning
the four Nain men were at their places : the tallest,
chosen captain by his mates, was in the bows with
a pole, scrutinising the ice-field; the others were
leaning over their oars, smoking and chatting and
exchanging gossip with the people who had gathered
to see us off.

Stroke-oar was vacant; but even as I looked

198 N

IN AN OPEN BOAT

about for Daniel, the man himself came lurdung
along hugging a big stone.

** Aksuse,** he said, and dropped the stone gently
into the boat. The others took no notice, beyond
the usual ** Ah/' and Daniel ambled off again. For
fully five minutes he went on with his task of
collecting stonra, and at last I asked him» ''Are
these for ballast?"' Daniel grinned and twinkled.
** Me cook/' he said, and settled to his oar. '' Taimak,
hai ? '' said the captain* '' Taimak,'' I answered from
my place by the rudder, and we were off.

I really think that the first few miles out of
Okak were the slowest that I have ever travelled,
not even excepting mauja-travelling on a sledge
trip. The pace was a trifle faster than standing still,
and that is about the best that I can say for it

Happily the day was calm, or we could never
have moved at alL The method of getting along
was simple enough in a way. The oarsmen stood
facing the bows, so as to see what was ahead ; some-
times they dipped their oars in the water, but more
often there was not enough water within reach, and
they had to shove the boat along by pushing with
their oars on the ice. The captain stood up with his
pole, carefidly keeping the boat from bumping the
ice, and separating the pans to make a passage, and
all the while he never ceased from muttering orders
to the rowers. The boat's nose was never pointing
in one direction for more than a minute or two;
north, south, east, and west we steered, and once we
were in the ridiculous position of having to wriggle a
hundred yards back towards Okak in our search for
a way. Things went quietly enough as long as we
were in the shelter of the bay, but outside we met

IN AN OPEN BOAT

tJtie tide, and found ourselves in a field of ice that

^^as constantly on the move. The captain leaned on

his pole, darting this way and that, and yelling his

oiHlers at the top of his voice, and tlie willing

boatmen toiled and shoved. At one moment the boat

-^VBS leaping forward through a clear channel ; at the

i:mext, a big ice-pan would eatch it and fling it round

^^dth a shudder, while the men strove to hold it off

^with their oars and perspired with the exertion. It

^veas an excitinir time, but we irot through without

d«..g.; -.dTfdt » much rdifved » tl^ Eddmos

^%^hen we came to a stretch of open water and left

1;he churning ice behind us. About midday a light

l>reeze sprang up, and the men heaved a great sigh of

relidf as they drew in their oars. In a minute they

had got the sails up, and the captain came jumping

over the thwarts and took the tiller.

Two of the oarsmen made their way to the deep
bows, and sat there chatting and filling their pipes ;
another just feU asleep where he was, sprawling over
his oar; while Daniel looked up at me with a
twinkle, and said again, ^' Me cook."

He seemed to enjoy my mystification, for his
next move was to pull a great butcher-knife from a
sheath hanging at his belt, and carefully sharpen it
on the palm of his hand. This was his hunting-
knife, his dinner-knife, the knife he used for cutting
his tobacco and for all the uses possible to imagine,
and 1 wondered what strange new use he had in his
mind for the well-worn tool. When it was sharp
enough, he chose a nice piece of firewood firom a pile
at his feet, and began to whittle shavings, looking
up with his characteristic grin to repeat his joke —

*^Mecook, eh?"

196

DANIEL AS COOK

When the pile of shavings had grown large
enough to earn a contemplative nod of satisfaction,
he betook himself to his heap of stones. He cleared
a space on the wet floor of the boat, and laid a big
fiat stone upon it, then he built a wall of smaller
stones around it, and filled up the hollow with
shavings and wood. Then he knelt down and struck
a match, and carefully lit his fire, poking and pufiSng
at it to make it burn. In a few minutes a trail of
smoke was streaming away into the air behind us,
and Daniel came to the triumphant climax of his
joke.

** Pujolik, pujolik " (a steamer), he yelled.

The two men chatting in the bows jumped up
with a start ; the steersman awoke firom his apathy
and gazed about him ; even the man sprawling across
the oar roused himself and raised his sleepy eyes;
and Daniel roared with glee at the success of his
little plot. ** Pujolik,*' he shouted, pointing to the
smoke, and we all entered into the spirit of the thing
and laughed boisterously.

Soon the sleepy head dropped again ; the steerman's
eyes once more took on their dreamy stare ; the men
in the bows scraped and filled their pipes, and
returned to their chatting; and Daniel turned to
his fire with a chuckle, and said, *' Now, me cook.''
He seemed to have everything at hand, for he
produced a kettle and a keg of water from apparently
nowhere with the unconcern of a professional con-
juror, and then he foraged in the provision-box for
the tin of tea. Oh, Daniel ! where did you leam to
make tea? I am thankful that the Eskimos like
their tea weak, for Daniel's method was to put a

pinch of tea in the kettle, fill it up with cold water,

196

DANIEL AS COOK

a.nd set it on the fire. In a quarter of an hour or so

I>a.niel was doling the boiling stuff into tin mugs,

and we were stirring the molasses in to suit our own

fancy. I enjoyed my lunch, for anything hot is

^^^^come on a Labrador journey. I have had too

xnany drinks of icy water, or lukewarm tea from a

stone jar carefully wrapped in skins, not to appreciate

]I>aniel's tea. Aye, one might fare worse ; and well

£or the traveller if he has a thoughtful man in the

l>oat, with a kettle and a heap of stones.

Towards evening we once more entered the ice-
field, and steered slowly between the heavy pans
as they edged to and fro with the gentle swell ; and
at dusk we made the anchor fast among the stones of
an islet at the foot of Cape Kiglapeit, and with half
our journey done we sat upon the rocks around the
bubbling tea-kettle, and sang our evening hymn.
The men cleared a space on the floor of the boat,
and spread the sail for an awning, and I laid me
down in my sealskin sleeping-bag and listened to
the lapping of the water. Before morning the
lapping had ceased : the water was frozen round the
boat, even on a July night.

These Eskimos are a hardy folk. I found my
five boatmen sleeping on a patch of moss among
the rocks, snoring contentedly in the cold air without
so much as a blanket among them ; and they woke
in the morning fresh and bright, and while I was
talking to Daniel over his breakfast cookery I spied
them scanning the ice-field from the highest point
of our island.

It was a beautiful spring morning, and the men
sang and laughed as they pushed the boat among the

ice. Daniel was in his element; he skipped from

197

DANIEL AS COOK

one part of the boat to another, always seeming
to be in the very thick of the work ; and once he
seized a rope and ran over the ice to haul us throu^
a narrow passage, while the others lolled and filled
their pipes again, and made remarks about Daniel
being a ** Fujolik, ai " (steamer again). Daniel came
to a sudden stop, and shouted, '< Jump out, all of
you," and in a moment we were on the ice dragging
the boat across, high and dry, to plump it into the
water again on the other side of the floe. At midday
we anchored against a small iceberg, and Daniel
clambered upon it to fill his kettle at a pool that
the sun was making in a hollow; then we poled
on again while the tea was warming over the fireplace
of stones. There was a short rest for the men during
the afternoon, when the sails were up and we beat

to and firo along a sheltered run; but soon the
captain said something that brought forth a chorus
of ** Aha's,'' and caused a general turning of heads.
There was a peculiar turbulence about the water in
front of us, and there was something familiar about
the hills around ; there on the right was the b^pn-
ning of the sledge-pass over Kiglapeit, and we were
entering on the piece of water that never freezes.
Soon we were tumbling and twisting among the
currents of a sort of miniature whirlpool, and the
oarsmen were straining and shouting in time while
the captain steadied the boat as well as he could
with the long sculling-oar at the stem. 1 had seen
the black spot of water on the white sheet of ice
only a month or two before, and many a time as
we passed the place on our winter journeys I had
wondered why Julius led the dogs close us^der the
rock. All the explanation he had given me was

DANIEL AS COOK

*' Sikkokarungnaipok-^tava " (never frozen) ; but now
I understood how the power of the battling currents
^ves the ice no chance to set, even in the bitter
cold of January.

The men were exhausted by the time the currents
i^ere bubbling half a mile behind us, and nodded
and grinned with appreciation when I suggested
supper. I decided on hot meat; but as we had
only one cooking utensil the tea and meat would
have to ^take turns, and Daniel chuckled as he
helped me to scrape the mutton out of the tin into
his usefid kettle. We anchcn^ at the mouth of a
little brook that was trickling through the melting
snow, and within a few minutes we were eating our
mutton out of our teacups while the kettle sat on
the fire filled with its usual cold water and tea-leaves.
We rinsed our cups at the rivulet, and drank the hot
tea thankfully ; then I took out the Bible, and the
men clustered round me for the evening reading.
I sat afterwards gazing at the lowering sky, while
the captain spread the sail over my sleeping-place
in the stem, and the others lay on the moss and
smoked. The captain came to me. ^' Storm to-
morrow," he said ; ** you go to sleep now ; we row
all night " ; and without another word he called to
the oarsmen and hauled the anchor up from the
water. Good-hearted fellows ; how I admired their
pluck. Rather than risk delay they would toil all
night at the oars, because the wind was coming,
and to-morrow it might be impossible to travel
among the ice-pans.

As I lay in the dark under the sail I could hear
the rhythmic creaking of the boards under the feet

of the captain, as he stood at my head rolling his

199

DANIEL AS COOK

heavy scuUing-oar, and I could hear the steady thump
of the oars against the thole-pms, and the si¥ish and
drip of the water; and, lulled by the measured
sounds and rocked by the gentle roll, I feU asleep.
I woke in the dark hour before the dawning, and
heard the sound of singing; it was Daniel's voice,
crooning a favourite hynm. Presently the others
took up the song, and sang, so softly, so as not to
wake me up, but keeping time to the plashing of
their oars. Hymn after hymn they sang to pass the
night away. Soon after sunrise we reached the wide
open water that narrows towards Nain, and then
up went the sail and in came the oars, and with the
water hissing past us and the ropes groaning and the
mast creaking under the strain of the wind we raced
into Nain harbour.

The people were waiting on the jetty. They
shouldered the bags and boxes ; the boatmen stowed
away the sail and oars, and anchored the boat, and
then went home to sleep, smiling and good-humoured
to the end.

That was the beginning of my closer acquaintance
with Daniel ; indeed, we are such good Mends that
I have even heard him talk about his hunting ex-
ploits. « Aha," says Daniel, « when I was a young
man I met a bear, and hadn't any gun — ai, ai" —
and up went his fingers, stiff and straight, to show
how his hair stood on end — ^''^ai, ai, I don't know
which was the more fiightened, I or the bear; for
after we had stood and looked at one another for
a long time, the bear turned and ran away. If it
had not run away, I suppose I should have run
myself. I went home for my gun; and next day
I found its tracks and shot iJie bear."

too

DANIEL'S HOUSE

Daniel's house is an architectural curiosity. For
some reason, or perhaps for no reason at all, it is at
t;he very end of the village, furthest from the church,
fiirthest &om the store, furthest from the jetty where
the boats are moored. In front is the usual porch,
open to the weather and tenanted by the dogs. The
door is fastened by a wooden latch, which you can
lift from the outside by pulling a bobbin that dangles
from a thong of seal-Idde. Inside you find yourself
in a square space where stands an iron stove, and
from a big bubbling pot on the top of the stove
there is generally rising the savoury smell of seal-
meat stew. Seals and skins and wooden pans of
blubber are strewed about the floor ; a keg of water
stands near the widl, and a rough bedstead fills a
comer.

But this is only the smaller part of DanieFs
house; the larger part lies further in. It is a big
oblong shack, with a sloping roof and walls hung
with dingy illustrated papers ; and it is placed cross-
wise, so that the little square part of the house looks
into it from one side. In the middle of the oblong
is a table, surrounded by the customary wooden
boxes that serve for seats and storage places; at
the two ends are sleeping places, roughly partitioned
off. A peep behind the partitions discloses an array
of bunks, where the children sleep ; a variable array,
sometimes one above the other like berths on board
ship, sometimes side by side. I have seen the bunks
witiiout sides, and once I found one of them missing
altogether, but this was after one of our Labrador
storms had kept everybody indoors for a couple of
days, and the stock of firewood had dwindled.

After the storm one of the boys drove away to

SOI

THE OLD WIDOW

the woods with the three dogs and fetched more
firewood^ and Daniel himself trotted along to the
store and got an old packing-case and spent the
rest of the day at the necessary piece of plain
carpentry.

I could see with half an eye that DanieFs house
had not all been built at one time; it looked like
two small houses joined together; and it was not
until Daniel had pointed to an old, old woman
crouching on the bed in the little square part, a
pathetic figure whom I hsd overlooked, that I hit
upon the real meaning of the queer architecture.
'^That poor old woman/' said he, "was left all
alone when her husband died. She had nobody
to take care of her, so my boys and I brought our
house along and built it up at the back of the old
woman's hut — takka" — and he pointed to the
oblong portion. ''It was a good thing for us all,
for we all have plenty of room, and one stove
warms us alL" Yes, I thought, and in his un-
conscious way Daniel has done that old widow
a thoroughly characteristic Eskimo act of kindness.
Poor old soul, she is blind and deaf, and can do
little else but sit over the stove and enjoy the
genial warmth; but an Eskimo likes to work to
the last, and I have seen even that old blind widow
sitting behind a snow-wall on the winter ice, patiently
jigging for fish, until the sun began to sink and a
little child came out to lead her home«

Such is DanieFs household ; and Daniel himself,

an ordinary, everyday Eskimo, goes in and out as

he follows his hunting and his daily work. He is

just an Eskimo, with his little foresight, and his

socialistic openhandedness, and his weaknesses and

SOS

THE OLD WIDOW

his limitations ; but the good in him comes from the
one source of all good, and for him some day there
will be the Master's voice — " Inasmuch as ye
did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it
unto Me."

SOS

CHAPTER XVI

Oqt with the Skal-Hunterb — ^Thk Harpoon — Shooting a Seal —
A Gruksomb Custom — Hauuno the Nets

THE last few weeks before the freezing of the
sea are a busy time for the Eskimos : the whole
village is in the ferment of a new excitement, for the
seal-hunt is beginning.

As I strolled along the snow-covered path that
runs in front of the huts I found men and boys
busily getting their kajaks ready for the water, lift-
ing them down from house-tops and scaffold poles,
searching for leaky places, smoothing the handles of
pautiks (paddles), bustling to and fro with harpoons
and loops of line, beaming with eagerness, and evi-
dently looking forward to their favourite season.
Every year it was the same, and I watched the pre-
parations with interest ; but my interest was doubled
when Jerry touched my sleeve and said, ** Kaigit,"
(come), and gave me a place in the stem of his
boat to see the fun.

If I had thought that I was in for a mad chase
among the waves I was to be disappointed, for I
soon found that nets were the order of the hunt
— nets stretched along the sea-bed in some weU-
known and favourite channel or inlet, with a patient
waiting in a smoky hut till morning, when the nets
would be hauled.

I envied the men in the kajaks ; they were after
seals in the proper old style, with their ingenious

to*

OUT WITH THE SEAL-HUNTERS

walrus-tusk harpoons; but there is no room for a
passenger in a kajak, and I had to content myself
with watching from a distance. And I had another
disillusionment, for Jerry shot a seal with his Win-
chester rifle. The Eskimo is fond of his rifle ; it
makes his hunting so much easier, but it takes a lot
of the picturesque away. And it is chasing the
animals away, too. It seemed a fairly natural thing
for an Eskimo to go after a walrus or a white bear
with kajak and harpopn; the creature must have
felt that it was meeting its great enemy on equal
terms; but when the rifle comes in the man has,
from the bear's or walrus's point of view, an almost
uncanny advantage. An unnatural element enters
into the hunt ; the animals became more wary ; they
are more frightened than ever by the smell of man ;
and away they go to the far north, where they can
fish and gambol unmolested. But happily — ^from
the picturesque point of view — your Eskimo is too
conservative to give up the ways of his fathers ; he
stm likes to shoulder his kajak or balance it on his
head, and pick his way among the stones to the sea,
and launch it with its weird and ingenious equip-
ment all ready for seal-hunting. The harpoon lies
ready at his right; and as he wields his paddle
he is always on the alert to let drive at the seal
as it pops up for air. The skill with the harpoon
is a tiling that the Eskimos have not lost, nor will
they lose it, I hope, till the end of time. When
I look at the haipoon that hangs upon my wall,
my mind travels back across the centuries to a
time when the Eskimos first learnt to hunt ; and I
imagine the hunter spearing the seal with a long

straight spear. A seal is a ponderous beast, and

206

THE HARPOON

agile withal ; and I caa imagine the creature, stung

by the sharp stab, diving with a jerk so sudden that

the spear broke short. This meant losing both seal

and spear; and seals and spears were precious. I

imagine one of these old hunters having a flash of

genius, the sort of flash that sometimes eomes to

these native peoples, and saying to himself, ** If my

spear must break, I will make a joint so that it may

break without being spoilt." Or perhaps it came

more slowly, and so some one who could not get a

new head for his spear bored holes in the broken

pieces with his flint boring-tool, and bound the

broken ends together with seal-hide thongs ; and, lo

and behold, next time he used his spear it broke

again at the mended place, and he bound it up again

wondering. Whether with a sudden inspiration, or

with the slower method of a gradual evolution from

that mended spear, no man can say ; but I imagine

a time dawning when aU the spears were jointed at

the head, and the hunters flung them with an added

eagerness because they knew that the problem of

smashed harpoons was solved. The evolution of the

harpoon went on ; the spear was a deadly thing ; it

killed, but it did not hold, and so some thoughtful

mind invented a barb.

The tusk which forms the head of the spear

cannot well be carved into a barbed shape, because

it is too slender. So came the next thing : the barb

must be separate, bound on with a thong ; and then

the hunter made the discovery of his life. When

the head broke at its joint the thong, of course, fell

slack — and the barb fell off. Now the harpoon was

perfect. No need to risk the loss of the precious

tusk ; the barb would do the work. Liet the line that

906

THE HARPOON

held it in place on the tip of the spear be a long one,
with a loop to hitch on to a knob on the shaft, and
with a bladder or float at the other end, thirty or
forty feet away. The seal might dash off or dive as
fast as it liked ; the shaft and jointed head would be
shaken free and would float on the water, but there
would be no shaking free from the keen grip of the
barb with its long trailing line and bobbing float.

This Uttle flight of imagination in which I have
indulged is, to my mind, the true explanation of one
of the most marvellous weapons that I have ever
seen — ^the real Eskimo harpoon.

No skilled mechanic has helped in its making;
it is the pure outcome of native genius, the finished
product of generations of hunting. Over it the
hunter spends long hours of patient scraping and
rubbing and boring and fitting ; the socketed joint
is as neat and firm as clever hands can make it ;
and the result is that the harpoon in the hands of a
modem Eskimo hunter does what he expects it to
do, and does it every time.

The man sits bdanced in his dancing kajak, and
flings his harpoon at the fat neck of the seal as it
pops up for a breath of air. The animal feels the
sudden pain, and dives with a lurch.

The hunter calmly and methodically reaches for
the blown-up skin that lies behind him, and drops
it on the waves. He knows that the harpoon will
bend where the head is jointed, and that the point
of the tusk will slip away from the socket in the
barb ; he knows that the line will unloop itself from
the knob on the shaft, and that the shaft and jointed
head will float in a piece upon the water ; he knows
that the seal has dived with the barb firmly bedded

THE HARPOON

in its flesh, but he knows, too, that the line will
follow, dragging the bobbing float to act as a mark ;
and when he has picked up his spear he paddles
towards the float and waits for the seal to come up
again. There is no great risk of the barb slipping —
why, strong fellows like Julius and Faulus can throw
the harpoon with such terrific force that the barb
sometimes goes clean throu^ the seaL The rest is
easy; the seal comes to the surface, dead, maybe,
or dazed and faint, and an easy target for the killing
dart Then the hunter's pulses throb. ''Puijesimavok"
(he has caught a seal), and he seizes it with a long hook
with notches in its handle, and lifts it by resting the
notches one after the other on the edge of his firail
kajak until he can slide the slippery carcase on to
the skin deck in front of him. Then he arranges the
harpoon and float in their places, and paddles home-
wards.

The harpoon that big Julius gave me hangs upon
my wall, but the float is somewhere on the broad
Atlantic — ^probably some prowling shark has made a
breakfast of it. I tried to bring it home. First
I put it under the cabin table. << Don't risk it
in the hold," said the second mate, ''the rats will
have it."

Under the table it stayed for a day or two, but

it was too much for us. Every time we sat down

to meals we kicked the awful thing ; its subtle odour

flavoured our food. Somebody would send it flying

across the cabin floor, and there it would lie until

one of us tripped over it in the dark ; it was an

odoriferous nuisance. Last of all I hung it up ; but

as we stumbled across the unsteady floor as the ship

rolled along, we used to meet that unsavoury shape

S08

SHOOTING A SEAL

with our faces. The very look of the bloated thing
took our appetites away. The voting was unanimous
and pressing. ** Overboard with it," so I regretfully
cast it to the sharks, and watched it dance upon the
waves, as it had often danced for big Julius when he
had a seal.

But I must get back to Jerry's boat. Our
particular seal hunt on that November morning was
partly an accidental one. I was sitting in the stem
of the boat, watching the rocks and the water. It
was a new thing to me, this scum of ice that the
waves were flinging up ; and the spray from the oars
was freezing as the wind whipp^ it over the side of
the boat.

I could see the kajaks frurther out, paddling about
in an aimless sort of way ; but I was mostly watching
the line of glistening boulders at the foot of the rocks,
with the oily-looking sea swilling over them, and
the simshine gleaming on the crust of ice which
the waves were leaving on them. The man with the
scuUing-pole, who was standing beside me in the
stem, suddenly whispered " Puije " (a seal) and his
face grew tense and eager. The oarsmen stopped
and turned to look, while Jerry, the owner of the
boat, hurriedly crammed a cartridge into his rifle.

This was all very mysterious to me. I was looking
all round for a head above the water, or for any
bubbles or disturbance that might mean a seal ; but
everything seemed as usual ; the dots of kajaks went
paddling on, and the sea swilled over the stones.

Jerry seemed to aim at the line of boulders below

the rocks, and my eyes followed the line of his barrel ;

but I saw nothing until the bang started a splodge of

red on one of the stones. The red seemed to slide into

809 o

SHOOTING A SEAL

the water, and the boat was off with a jerk. The
oarsmen puUed with all their might ; the man at the
stem was rolling the boat from side to side with the
force of his sculling ; and Jerry was eagerly looking
out and shouting terse directions. There seemed to
be nothing but the red patch near the rocks, where
the water was all stained with blood; but as the
steersman brought the boat sweeping round the
others pulled in their oars and leaned over the dde,
and in less tune than it takes to teU I was helping
them to heave a big seal into the boat. It came
slithering over and flopped down, and lay there, limp
and lifeless, with whiskers quivering and big eyes
seeming to gaze right into mine. It looked just like
one of the rocks close by ; its silvery coat, flecked
with black and shining with wet, was a perfect imita^-
tion of the black boulders with their coating of ioe
and the water swilling over them. No wonder my
eyes could not see it when the steersman did ; but
Eskimo eyes are different.

For the moment things seemed strangely quiet :
there was something so human in the look of those
big placid brown eyes that I felt almost miserable to
see the innocent thing lying dead. But I came back
from my dreams with a start. My boatmen seemed
to go back of a sudden to their ancestry of hundreds
of years ago ; for one minute the old original Eskimo
in them welled up and drowned all that I knew of
them. They slit the seal's throat and sucked its
warm blood.

Our organist, who can render ckssical tunes fix)m

the oratories for voluntaries in church, and who can

play any instrument in the band that he chooses ; the

schoolmaster, who can preach a sermon, and teach

SIO

I I

ii
lj

J. it

A GRUESOME CUSTOM

the youngsters their ABC, and their smattering of
geography and arithmetic; the man who sings the
tenor solos in the choir — ^they were, after all, just
Eskimos, with all the instincts of the Eskimo still
strong within them, not a whit spoUt for the rough
life that is their inheritance. They bent m a group
over that quivering seal, and quaffed the warm blood
that welled out of it. That heartened them I That
made them mighty hunters ! That kept the cold out
— and, after all, it was a custom of the people.

They picked up their oars and rowed on, and I
was thankful for what I had seen. The Eskimos are
Eskimos yet.

The casual visitor in the summer time sees them
salting fish for market, and drinking tea and eating
biscuits ; he finds them wearing European clothes,
and great clod-hopping hob-nailed boots, that they
have bought from schooner folk in exchange for skin
clothes and home-made sealskin boots: he might
think that the Eskimos of the picture-books were
gone, and that only among the icy solitudes of the
Polar regions, and in the unknown creeks of Baffin's
Land, were there people true to the type. But no,
even in Labrador, where European missionaries have
been working for a hundred and forty years, and
where everybody is taught to read and write, where
Christianity has taken the place of the imcanny incan-
tations of the witch-finders and the weird chantings of
the priests of Tomgak, the Eskimos are Eskimo to
the core. In the church, on the ship, in the presence
of visitors, their native ways arefnot much in evidence ;
they are still shy of strangers, and fear to be laughed
at ; but with those who live among them, those who,

like myself, travel with them and eat with them and

Sll

HAULING THE NETS

speak their language, they are the kind-hearted, open-
handed, raw-meat-eating Eskimos. An Eskimo is no
less a Christian because he sucks blood from a freshly
killed seal : he can thank God for his food just as
well as we can for ours.

I never thought that I should sleep in a green-
house on the freezing coast of Labrador, but that is
how I spent that night. The missionaries at Okak
had given up their greenhouse after futile efforts to
grow early v^fetables, and had sold it for a mere
song to one of the seal hunters. He took it away in
sections, and put it together at the sealing place, and
was very cproud of it altogether. By daylight it
reminded me rather of a photographic studio, and
the properties — rough bedsteads, a battered stove, a
couple of decrepit chairs, and a whole host of nets
and dogs' harness and spears and hatchets and rusty
guns — ^would have given me some unique pictures if
I had had the chance to stay awhile. But time was
precious : I only wanted to see the hauling of the net,
and then I must go home again.

We were out soon after daybreak, and it was
cold.

The winter that came afterwards was far less
biting; for the autumn wind, blowing over the
freezing sea, nipped and chilled me as nothing that I
have ever known. It was interesting enough to see
the Eskimos trotting down to the rocks where the
shore-rope lay, and where the float that marked the
far end of the net danced on the black water. I was
half frozen, stamping about to get warm ; and they —
they cheerfully pulled the wet ropes up, chewing at
their pipes and chatting merrily, and every now and
again stopping to wring the water out of their sodden

HAULING THE NETS

gloves. The cold did not seem to bite them:
** Un6t " (what does it matter), they said, " it is our
life : we are made for it " ; and they pulled their
stiffening gloves on again to keep the rope from
chafing their hands* They got the heavy seals out
all stiff and dead, and piled them in a sort of stock-
ade to freeze, ready to be fetched home during the
winter. One was partly eaten by sharks. ^^ Sharks
no good at all," they said ; ** eat the seals and break
the nets. Sometimes we catch him, but he is no
good except for dogs' food, and his skin makes fine
sandpaper for smoothing the sledge runners."

It was only the middle of November, but Okak
Bay was already beginning to freeze at the' edges.
The boatmen had to smash the new ice with their
oars, and as we got nearer the jetty our boat stuck,
and one of the men climbed over the side and clung
there, stamping a passage with his heels.

Jerry and his men only stayed long enough to
buy a few necessaries at the store; and I watched
them shove their boat through the passage we had
just made, which was already half frozen, and hoist
their saiL With a wave of the hand and a shout of
"Aksunai," they set their course for the mouth of
the bay, and I walked up the jetty to the village.

For a fortnight the hunters were busy with their

nets and their kajaks ; and then the sea was frozen,

and the seal hunt was over for the season. The seals

were away to their winter haunts at the edge of the

ocean ice; winter had begun — and the nets were

fcozen in. It happens the same way every year : the

people want to make the most of their opportunity,

and they cannot tell exactly when the sea will freeze,

so they leave the nets in the water a day too long

218

HAULING THE NETS

rather than have them up a daj too soon ; and every
year they have the awkward job of hacking them
out. They waste no time, for every minute the ice
is getting thicker. As soon as morning comes^and
they see the '< sikko " (ice) that covers their bay» they
trot along with axes to tackle one of the coldest bits
of work that it is possible to imagine.

They only need to free the ropes where th^ dip
below the surface, for the net is at the sea bottom,
and once freed with the axes there is nothing to do
but haul. But the hauling 1 In my eagerness to
have every possible experience I lent a hand at the
rope, but my fingers stiffened round it, and I suffered
all the agony of gripping a red-hot poker. My poor
hands ached for hours. And the Eskimos tugged at
the rope, and gathered up the meshes all stiffening
in the wind and dripping with icicles, and piled the
net on the rocks above high-water mark, and rubbed
their hands indifferently, and ambled off to get their
sledges ready. ''Home for Christmas" was the
word; and in a few days the sledges came racing
round the bend into Okak Bay, bringing the families
back to their winter homes at the Mission village.

S14

CHAPTER XVII

At the Edge of the Ice — A Tragedy — ^Landing a Walrus

— ^Martin's First Seal

THOUGH times hare changed since the old
days, and a man can sell his fish and blubber
and fiirs at the store and buy flour and ship's biscuits
and other plain things, the nature of the Eskimos has
not chang^. They still like to depend on the hunt
for their daily food ; they still go out hungry in the
morning, and gorge themselves on the raw flesh of
the seals they bring home. This is their custom,
part of their nature, bom in them ; they are a nation
of hunters, and whatever changes in morals and
housing and education passing years have seen among
them, in tiiis one thing they do not change. And
well it is that the Mission has been able to keep them
true to their traditions in this matter, for to my mind
there is no doubt at all that the life of a hunter is the
ideal life for an Eskimo. It is the life for which he
is especially gifted ; the raw meat that he eats keeps
him fit and well, and the exposure hardens him to
bear the climate of his firozen land. And I do not
base my belief on conjecture only ; I base it upon
what I have seen. At Okak, and in the north gener-
ally, the people are broad and plump, with^flat faces
and sunken noses; but further south I have seen
lean, sharp-fiiced Eskimos, with bony limbs and
pointed noses. They are pure-blooded Eskimos, all

of them ; they may be lean and bony without any

S16

AT THE EDGE OF THE ICE

admixture of other blood; and the cause of the
change lies in the altered food and habits of the people
themselves.

At the southern stations they are more in contact
with the outside world, and, especially, there are
English-speaking settlers living among them, cod-
fishing and fur-trapping. The Eskimos are bom
imitators; they do what they see others do; and
when they have settler folks living among them in
little wooden shacks like their own, and passing in
and out among them, it is small wonder that they
fSedl into the settler habits of food and clothing.

They take to garments of cloth instead of the
sealskin that Nature has given them ; and they eat
less of their raw meat and blubber and more of
the bread and tea and cooked meats of the settlers.
And Nature rebels. The southern Eskimos are,
as a consequence, less hardy than their northern
brethren; they cannot bear cold so well, but need
more fire, more clothing, and more warm food;
and their children are more puny. This is an un-
fortunate thing, but I must record it for complete-
ness' sake, because it is one of the dangers that
threatens the Eskimo people as civilisation overtakes
them. If they give up their native foods they wiU
dwindle and die out. This is my firm belief, and
so I record with all the more satisfaction how I
found my neighbours at Okak to be real Eskimo
hunters.

During the long winter that followed the home-
coming of the families to their wooden homes in
the village the men were seldom idle. In my
visits to the houses I always found the women in

charge* and my question ** Aipait nannek& ? " (where

£16

AT THE EDGE OF THE ICE

is your husband ?) nearly always brought the answer
^* Sin&mut aigivok " (he is off to the edge of the ice
again). That is the hunting-place that the Eskimos
love, the edge of the ocean ice, where the seals
sport in the chilly water or clamber on the ice
t;o rest Sometimes, when sudden sickness has
caUed me into the village in the small hours of
the morning, I have heard the scufflings and yelp-
ings of dogs, and have seen dim and shadowy men,
dressed in sealskin clothes, trotting down the track
among the hununocks towards the sea ice, off* to the
*« sina."

When I talked about the sinft to big Gustaf
he simply said ** We go, eh ? Start at four : I will
wake you up," taking it for granted that if I
went at all I would do it in proper Eskimo style.
As this was more or less of a pleasure trip I made
a sort of compromise with good Gustaf s ideas on
the subject, and the clock was well on towards five
before I met him on the doorstep.

I was fortified with a good breakfast of bacon
and eggs— eggs kept in waterglass since the ship
brought them last summer — but Gustaf would have
none. " No," he said, " I shall eat by-and-by " ;
and from what I had seen of Eskimo mealtimes I
imagined him disposing of several pounds of seal-
meat and a pint or two of weak tea when the day's
work was done.

Nevertheless I saw that he was chewing, pensively
chewing with a steady champ, champ, champ, as he
disentangled the dogs from one another.
" What are you chewing ? " said I.
'' Eoak " (frozen), answered Gustaf ; and he went

on to tell me that he had got a mouthfid of fixxsen

217

AT THE EDGE OF THE ICE

raw sealmeat; that was plenty; it was the custom
of the people. ** AnanAk " (splendid) ; he said^ ^^ it
makes me warm ; it gives me sinews ; piovok-illa **
(good indeed). I envied him his warmth, for on a
raw bleak morning like that the effects of bac<Mi
and hot cc^ee are soon gone, and I was forced to
try to trot in the darkness to keep my circula-
tion up.

It was the middle of the morning before we
got among the lumps and hummocks and hollo¥rs of
the sinft ; and there were signs of other hunters on
the field before us. We passed a little snow hut,
with sledge tracks beside it, and Gustaf said,
<^ Johannes probably. He came here yesterday:
Slept all night, hunt all day.''

We were a pleasure party, but Gustaf had
brought his gun, and was crouching with eager face
among the hummocks. Presently there was a bang,
and he was all excitement. ''Pivunga" (I hit it),
he said. ** Takka, takka (there, there) : where can I
getakajak?"

There was no kajak to be had, and I thought he

was going to lose his seal; but no, he was not to

be beaten ; he climbed on to a floating piece of ice,

and paddled off to fetch his prize. There he

croudied on his precarious perch, with I don't care

to think how many fathoms of freezing water under

him; and presently I saw him rafting back, with

the dead seal trailing after. I tihink he seemed to

like the spice of danger — or perhaps he did not know

what danger meant. Yet danger there is, as we

were reminded not many days later, when a sledge

drove into Okak Bay with an Eskimo boy sitting

upon it. He sat strangely stilly and that was enough

218

A TRAGEDY

to make us think that something was wrong, for an
Sskimo driver is nearly always trotting beside his
sledge. The dogs turned hungrily towards their
accustomed door, but the boy took no notice of
them, but left them in their harness and ran towards
the Mission house. I watched him pass, ashen faced,
panting, stumbling; and a little lata I heard his
story. At first incoherently, then with graphic
gestures and loud lamentations he told his tale ; and
here it is.

His name was Rena, and he had started at day-
break for the edge of the ice. His brother, Jakko,
was with him, and they were after seals. They had
a harpoon and a gun, and they talked as they went
of the splendid hunt they would have on so fine a
day. Tautuk 1 such clear, calm water and so many
seals swimming about ; it was a real day for the sind,
and before they had been there many minutes Jakko
had shot a seal It was wounded and floated on the
water, lashing with its flappers but too weak to dive.
Oh for a boat or a kajak ; but they had, none, and
reach that seal they must. They did what Eskimos
always have done in like circumstances and always
will do ; they clambered on a piece of loose ice and
paddled with their hands towards the seal

They got on fairly well until they were twenty
or thirty yards from tiie edge of the icefield and the
seal was near enough to be speared. Jakko stood up
and poised his harpoon, ready to strike, while Rena
paddled gently with his hands to steady the ice-raft.
The change of position must have upset the balance
of the ice, for no sooner did Jakko stand up than it
began to heel slowly over. For a moment ijiey were

too intent on the seal to notice their peril, but as the

S19

A TRAGEDY

movement increased it dawned upon them that they
were turning over.

And then the slow-witted Jakko had one of
those flashes of inspiration that come at such times ;
with a quick cry of *^ Stay where you are, Rena»" he
jumped into the water. Exactly what was in his
mind we never knew. One thing is certain — ^he saw
the danger. If both stayed upon the ice it w^ould
upset and both would be in the water; he could
swim a little, but Rena could not do a stroke. Did
he think to reach the safety of the icefield by sivim-
ming, or did he say, *^ Better one to be drowned than
both " ? Whatever the explanation, all that Rena
could say was that he felt the ice-pan rolling over ;
he heard the shout of ** Stay where you are," and saw
his brother leap into the waves. And that was alL
The raft righted itself with a lurch that nearly flung
him off; but he managed to hold on and paddled
frantically to and fro in a vain search for his brother.
Poor Rena paddled and paddled and paddled until
his brain reeled and his hands were stiff, but never
a sign did he see of Jakko. Folks do not get drowned
in water like that ; it was the Atlantic, two or three
degrees below freezing point, cold enough to numb
the brain and paralyse the heart of the strongest;
and so poor Jakko met his death. Like a flash he
had sunk in the dark water, dazed and hdpless.
Hours after the catastrophe Rena scrambled from
his frail island on to the safe icefield and flung
himself on to the sledge and let the dogs take him
home.

This is the true story of two boys that I knew,

Jakko and Rena Mellik, one of whom threw his life

away to save the other. It gives the Eskimo a lift

fOtO

LANDING A WALRUS

^towards the heroic in one's imagination ; they are a
xiation of stolid, unemotional hunters, used to facing
<leath in icefields and canoes and awfiil storms on
ixiountain passes, quiet and unconcerned in times of
danger, but capable at a crisis of showing that greater
love that prompts a man to lay down his life for his
friend.

There was gloom for a few days after the tragedy
of Jakko ; but the Eskimos soon forget ; bereavement
does not wound them very deeply, and soon the
village wore its usual air of subdued bustle, and away
at the sinft the hunters were after the seals.

But seals are not the only quarry; by far the
best fortune that a man can have at the sin& is to
catch sight of a walrus resting on the ice. The great
idea is to rush boldly upon the ponderous beast and
spear or shoot it while it is too dazed to move. It
has no chance; it is unwieldy and slow and has
hardly^made up its mind which way to turn before
the hunter is on it and its life is over. ''Ahaila,"
said Gustaf with a grin when I asked him about it,
^'Eskimo make a noise and run fast and Aivek
(walrus) stay there all the time and get killed plenty
sooa Go quiet, creep, creep, creep, and old Aivek
smell Eskimo and crawl off to the water. Flop,
gone, no catch him now; plenty frightened, no
good" I knew very weU while Gustaf was telling
me all this in his queer, broken English, with
wavings of his hands and expressive grins and
shrugs, that he would be quite ready to embark in
his kajak and hunt the walrus in its native element.
A wakus is, no doubt, a formidable beast; its
ferocious eyes and bristling whiskers and great gleam-
tusks make a terrible picture ; and the very weight

221

LANDING A WALRUS

of its tremendous rush would be enough to fri^ten
most folkS) quite apart from the uncanny agility
the huge animal displays. But the Eskimo in his
kajak is a match for the walrus ; he is every whit as
active, and twice as sharp-witted; and if the men
at the W1& see a walrus disporting himself in the
water they are after him like a shot; and though
they do not often have the chance that my Killinek
guide had, of paddling into the middle of a school of
walruses and calmly harpooning the old bull because
he had the best tusks, they seldom let the odd
ones and twos escape if they get within strikiz^
distance.

Landing a walrus is no joke. I say '* landing'^
because it is the only word to convey the idea of
hauling the great carcase out of the water on to the
ice, and the ice is every bit as good as land to the
Eskimos. What a walrus weighs I do not know,
but it stands to reason that a creature fourteen feet
long and fourteen feet round the middle is an
enormous lump to lift-
No Eskimo would dream of trying to pack
a whole walrus on his sledge; for one things it
would roll off at the first lurch, and, for another
thing, I hardly think that any sledge could stand the
strain. Gustaf grinned and shook his head at this
idea of mine. ** My sledge stand anything," he said ;
** got no nails in it, only fine seal-hide thongs ; very
strong ; " and though Gustaf may have overrated his
sledge, I have seen him drive his twenty dogs up to
the Mission house with a load of drinking water, two
great puncheons of it, full half a ton in weight, and
that should be a fair test of workmanship. But
another reason for cutting up a walrus at the sin& is

'■l

MARTIN'S FIRST SEAL

than an old Eskimo custom steps in and says it must
be so.

Every one who sees the capture must have a
share.

The lucky hunter skins his huge catch, and chops
it into chunks, and hands the pieces round. Even
the interested visitor there on a pleasure trip gets a
great piece thrust upon him.

As for myself, I drew the line at walrus. The
flesh is rank and coarse, and even the liver is tough ;
and though I have tried to eat the boiled skin which
the Eskimos find so tasty, I preferred to leave it to
them — it seemed more natural to let them eat what
they could, and make the rest mto whips and sledge
drags, than to loosen my teeth over its exceeding
toughness.

Shortly after my visit to the sin& I saw a boy
walking along the village path, canning what looked
like a big and slimy slug.

Whatever horrible thing had the lad got? He
carried it by the middle, and it dangled quivering on
each side of his hand. He had an air of importance
with him, and every one he met stopped to say a
word and to have a look at his loathsome handfuL

Behind him marched his father and mother, both
looking very proud.

'^Hai, Martin/* I shouted, <^what have you
got?''

''Eissek'* (sealskin), he said, and came trotting

along to unroll his package on the snow, and display

a fresh sealskin well scraped and washed and sodden

with brine. ** My first seal," he said, grinning shyly.

Ikpeksak anguvara'' (I caught it yesterday).

He seemed in a hurry to be ofiT, so I let him go

22S

MARTIN'S FIRST SEAL

without further question, and watched the little
procession make its way to the Mission house.
During the evening I saw his father again^ and
broached the subject of Martin's sealskin.

Lukas's eyes brightened. '^Illa, ilia," he said,
'^ Martin angusimavok " (Martin has quite caught a
seal) — ^as much as to say, '^My son is a grown-up
hunter now : he is a man."

^'And what was he doing with the sealskin?"
said I.

** Issumaminik " (his own idea), answored Lukas ;
and he wandered off into a long story of the catching
of the seal. ** I took him to the sin& yesterday, to
look after my dogs; but there came a seal very
close, and I lent Martin my gun, and he shot it.

** Kuvianarmdk (what rejoicing there was) — ^there
were many people there, and Martin cried < Anguvara,
anguvara,' and they all came running to see. He
knows how to skin a seal and cut it up, because he
has often seen his mother do it. Ilia, he is a man
now, emera-una (that son of mine). We all drank
its blood, and Martin drank too — ^his first seal — ^and
he cut the skin and blubber off, for they are his own.
He caught the seal himself, with his own hand.
Nakom^k (how thankful). And he cut the seal in
pieces, and gave everybody a piece, for that is a
custom of the people when a boy kills his first seaL
He saved the liver for his father and mother, as
is right to do ; and he put a big special lump of the
best meat on the sledge because his mother told him
to do so, and we brought it home.

**What shall we do with it? Ilia"— with a
twinkle — "that is for old Henrietta. She was the
helper when he was bom ; she it was who saw him

MARTIN'S FIRST SEAL

safely into the world, and dressed him in his first
clothes. Surely she shall have a share of Martin's
first seal — and, besides, it is a custom of the people.
The blubber he will sell at the store to-morrow, and
that will be the first money he has earned at the seal
himt : ilia, he is very proud and thankful. Now he
shall go with me to the sinft every day, except when
he must stay at home and chop firewood for his
mother, for he is a good boy, emera-una; and he
will catch seals often, and learn to be as fine a hunter
as his father— better, perhaps, for my eyes are not as
good as they were. And soon, when I am an itok
(old man) and his mother is a ningiok (old woman)
he will go alone to the hunt and bring seals every
day, and I shall stop at home and chop the firewood ;
and he will have a wife to help the ningiok scrape
the skins, and the kittomgakulluit (little children)
will play about the floor. But I still have nukke
(sinews): I wiU go to the sinft to-morrow, and he
will chop wood. And the skin? The skin of
Martin's first seal ? lUa, issumaminik, it was quite
his own idea. We had been reading how the people
of Israel used to give the first-fruits to God, and
Martin thought he would like to do that with the
first seal he had ever caught ; so he took the skin to
the missionary, and that is how you saw him
yesterday."

9St5

CHAPTER XVIII

Fur-trapping — A New Year's Godsend — ^Thb Reindeer Hunt

NO sooner is one hunting season over than
another begins ; or, to be more exact, there
is always hunting to be done of one sort or another,
and sometimes two sorts at a time.

I thought that perhaps the men would be rather
idle after the sledges came home for Christmas, wait-
ing for the sea-ice to harden right out to the edge ;
but there is very little idleness in an Eskimo hunter's
life. Sometimes I have gone into one of the huts
in tiie dajrtime, and while the hunter was taking
his well-earned rest between his morning tramp to
the traps and his strenuous afterboon of wood-
chopping, I have stepped across his sleeping figure
to watch his wife stretching a fox-skin upon a
wooden shape, and have seen the pot of fox-flesh
stewing over the stove, ready for a feast when
father should wake up; and the mother has put
down her scraper and wiped her hands and turned
the skin with careful fingers, to show me the
lovely fur of a white or red or even a silver fox,
and then has gently turned it back and taken up
her scraper to plod slowly and cautiously on at
the work she has to do to get the skin ready for
market, her eyes gleaming as she thought of the
dollars and dollars that that skin meant, and of
all the food and clothing and even luxuries that
those dollars would buy — a new roof for the house,

AAA

FUR-TRAPPING

maybe, for it was sadly leaky in the springtime,
or a new gun for the hunter, and clothes for every
one of them, not to speak of a barrel of flour and
a bag of ship's biscuit and a hanging lamp to bum
paraffin oil I

The hunter is as careful as his wife over those
valuable furs — and woe betide her if he catches her
making a tear or a cut in the course of her scraping f
There must be no spot, no blemish, no mark upon
the skin ; and when he finds a fox in his trap, if it
is not already dead from the cold he dare not risk
spoiling the fur by shooting it, but kneels upon its
diest and so puts an end to its life.

The Mission pays very generous prices for furs,

and one can easily understand that the result of a

night's trapping may make a poor man rich at a

single boimd. It happened that way in the case of

a poor fellow called Mdl6, who lived in a hut on the

hill behind us. All the autumn he lay ill ; and the

seal hunt went by and left him destitute. He could

not even hire his net out as some men do, because

he was too poor to own one: he was one of the

kajak men, and was wont to depend altogether upon

his skill with the harpoon. So the boisterous

autumn passed, and never a chance did he get to

go a-hunting: the ice came, and he was penniless.

He was not starving, for the Eskimos are always

neighbourly enough to find food for one another,

and he had help from the Mission and the hospital ;

but his position was a serious one, for he had a

large family to keep, and he had the winter to face

without seals. That would mean giving up his few

dogs, for dogs are hungry brutes, and without dogs

he could neither go to the ice-edge nor fetch fire-

SS7

FUR-TRAPPING

wood; it would mean no boots and clothing, no
frozen meat, no blubber, no lamp oil; it would, in
a word, mean absolute destitution of just those
things that an Eskimo needs the most

I remember the first day that he left his bed,
for I went into the hut and found him sitting on a
box, propped against the wall ; his wife was quietly
crying over a pair of boots that the missionary had
given her to make, and the children were sitting
as quiet as mice upon the floor. Mdl6 was the
most cheerful of all. '* lUa," he said ; '* Gk)d has given
me back my health, and for that I am thankfuL"

" And what will you do now, M616 ? "

''Atsuk; I shall trust my Father — I can do
nothing else."

I thought that his simple expression of faitii
was admirable, and it was with a queer lump in my
throat that I turned and left the poor contented
fellow. I could not help thinking that few folks,
however well-to-do, are blessed with so much peace
of mind.

The hand of God, I think, is strangely near to
these simple nature peoples — ^for so it seemed in
Mdld's case. On New Yeafs Eve he took his first
walk out of doors, and, being a practical-minded
man, he thought to turn his walk to good account
by shouldering his fox-trap. He slowly made his
way to the nearest trapping-place, a piece of broken
ground dotted with stunted trees, and hidden behind
the hills, and there he set and baited his trap. He
walked home again, and peacefully went to sleep
on his hard bed of boards and reindeer skins.

On the next afternoon I went into Mdld's hut
to see how he was getting on, and was surprised to

A NEW YEAR S GODSEND

find several of our great hunters gathered there

discussmg something. M^l^ himself was sitting on

his box, with snow on his boots and his face red

with the cold ; he was evidently not long home from

another expedition. He was crying silently. ** What

is the matter ? '* said I. " Tagga " (look there), said

Gustaf, our greatest fur-trapper ; ** tagga," and pointed

to the table. The group drew away and let me pass,

and I saw at once the cause of the excitement ; on

the rough boards there lay a beautiful black fox.

••Igvit (yours), M616?" I asked him. "Ahaila,"

he sobbed. ** I went to-day to my fox-trap, my

poor little only fox-trap that I set yesterday and

baited with a piece of the seal meat that Daniel

sent us for dinner, and that was too much for us

to finish ; and there were many other men there

setting their fox-traps *' — " Ilia, ilia, we were there,"

said some of the men grouped in the hut — ** and

I set my little fox-trap by itself, and their fox-traps

were all about, here and there among the trees.

And to-day I went again to look at my trap, and

behold, I have a black fox. TattamnarmSk (it is

wonderAil) : some of the other men had foxes, red

foxes and white, but my trap only has a black one.

Surely God put it there because I am the poorest

man and need it the most. NakomSk." And it

was New Year's Day I

Could I wonder at the man's emotion? Could

I help sharing the excitement of the other trappers

at this stroke of what we in our enlightenment call

** luck " ? M616 and his family were supplied with

enough and to spare ; they could buy seal meat and

dog's food and blubber and clothes, enough to last

them the winter through. And I wish the story

9S9

A NEW TEAR'S GODSEND

could end there : but in {Sidmess to my picture of the
Eskimos it must not.

M616 was just like all the rest of them, improvi-
doit, open-handed, goierous to a fiuilt: and so» in
his rejoicing, he called his friends and neighbours
together, and feasted them and fed them, and cele-
brated the wcmderful day, and of course befc^e the
winter was over M^6 was a poor man again,
hvinir from hand to mouth and just Aiming eiiou£^
to tLp his &may gobg-but i thiTS helilS!
never forget how plenty came into his house and
built up his health and spirits on that New Year's
Day. It is a true story ; and somewhere, I suppose,
thete is a wealthy lady wearing a lovely black fox
fur, little thinking that it is Mdld's New Year's
Grodsendl

It sometimes happens that the Eskimo catches a
Tartar in his fox-trap, if the smell of the putrid bait
of rank and rotten seal meat chances to attract a
wandering wolverine. The powerful brute, finding
itself fast, marehes off with the trap, snarling and
grumbling at the pain ; and before the hunter can
add it to his bag he has a weaiy trail through the
woods, up and down, to and fro, following the blood-
stained line of the trailing trap, and at the end of it
all he has to face a sharp encounter with one of the
most dangerous things a man can meet, a mad and
furious wolverine. He is probably thankful to shoot
the beast before it does him an injury — if he has a
gun with him.

As a matter of fact, the men seldom go to their

traps without their guns. It is not that they have

danger or big game in their minds, but because there

is always a chance of meeting a partridge (rock

iSO

ue calleclinE, u IbCTaEwayi do, lo ini^l induipui icnuuki. Thaman on the JeA iijiutbomc

koawlcdgi of ihe hsunii of Ihc rockcod, ud walk piiltj lo their favouHie placet.

THE REINDEER HUNT

ptarmigan) on the road, and a partridge, eaten raw
and warm, is a real delicacy to Eskimo ways of
thinking.

There is bigger game for those who seek it; I
have heard the scufflings of a wolf among the dogs
when we camped in a snow hut on the momitain
pass, and I have known the drivers stop the sledge
among the stunted trees on some desolate neck of
land between the fiords, and have watched them
peering at the spoor of a bear in the snow. '* Tumin-
git " (his footprints), they say. " Old, no good.*'

It is remarkable how long one may live in
Labrador without seeing any of these fur animals in
the wild state ; as for mjrself , the nearest I ever got
to a bear was when Paulus came to me and said ** Me
kill a bear — ^you want some, eh?'' and so for next
day's dinner we had a roast haunch of black bear on
the table, and found it excellent. There are black
bears in plenty for those who have the time or the
opportunity to go after them; as late as 1907» a
party of officers from a visiting ship went up Nain Bay
in a launch, and shot three fine bears in one afternoon.

The Eskimos themselves are always on the tracks
of one sort of animal or another; hunting is their
very life, and as the days of winter went by, and the
excitement of sealing at the sinft and trapping in the
woods began to wane, I was not surprised that there
was something else to occupy their thoughts.
** Tuktu " began to be the burden of their talk from
morning till night.

The men stood chattering in groups ; the women

indoors were sewing and mending from dawn to

sunset and sometimes far into the night; ''Tuktu,

tuktu, tuktu," was in everybody's mouth — ^the rein*

«81

THE REINDEER HUNT

deer hunt was coming. Presently the word went

round that the Nautsertortut (scouts) were out, and

the excitement became intense. This was early in

March, and all day long the people were going in

twos and threes to the top of the nearest hill, to

watch the sledge traek for the home-coming of the

scouts. Custom has fixed Easter Tuesday as the

day for the beginning of the hunt, and although the

custom is a comparatively new one, introduced to

give the huntars the opportunity of attending the

special services in the church during the Passicm

Week, it is very loyally observed : no Eskimo would

dream of cutting the services to go a-hunting, but so

eager are they to have ever3rthing ready, and so fiill

are they of the all-important subject of the reindeer,

that before Easter comes several of the men will

certainly go to spy out the land and to bring back

reports of the probable whereabouts of the deer.

This is especially the case when Easter falls late;

and when I missed this or that familiar face about

the village and asked " Jonase nannek& ? " I was able

to anticipate the answer, '* Nautsertorpok " (he has

gone to scout). The scouts seldom bring home any

venison ; they have done their part if they bring

home a report, such as ** I saw no reindeer yet," or

*' I have seen tracks, kannitom§kdrput " (they seem to

be near) ; or, best of all, '^ I saw three deer in the

distance, sivorli6jut (the leaders) probably." Then

the excitement bubbles over into energy. Men

stand grouped round sledges on the snow, planing

and smoothing and polishing the runners, binding up

slack joints and patching weak places with iron

plates ; harpoons are shoved among the rafters of the

roof, and kajaks are hoisted on poles, out of reach of

S82

THE REINDEER HUNT

the prowling dogs; women are stitching as if for
dear life, getting the boots and clothing ready for
the great occasion; there is stir and bustle all day
long.

To my mind the most interesting of all these
preparations is the mending of the guns. I had seen
them at this odd occupation many times before I
discovered what they were about

A man wanders out of his hut with a gun upon

his shoulder and a cluster of friends at his heels. He

sits down upon a lump of ice, and some lad or other

hurries off to set a mark on one of the hummocks,

fifty or sixty yards away. Then the firing begins,

and after each shot there is a hubbub of voices, and

the gun is passed ftom hand to hand. Perhaps some

famous hunter tries a shot, and delivers a slow and

weighty opinion, whereupon the voices start jabbering

again. When he thinks the trial has been sufficient

to assure him of the weaknesses of his weapon, the

owner of the gun hammers the barrel with a stone

and tries another shot. It is not likely that one

hammering wiU satisfy him; perhaps he has

** straightened " it a little too much, and must give

it a few thumps on the other side : he smacks away

at it with his stone, and cocks his eye along it and

hammers again, and tries another shot; and so the

performance goes on, to the accompaniment of serious

and critical remarks, until the gun is '^ mended." It

matters not the least what sort of a gun it be ; a new

and costly rifle gets just the same treatment as the

veriest old blunderbuss with its stock bound round

with twine: whatever the gun, the barrel must be

made to accord with Eskimo ideas of straightness ;

and the queer thing is that the owner of the gun,

S8S

THE REINDEER HUNT

once it is properly *' mended/' can shoot with tiie
most deadly aim. It seems to suit him the better for
the hammering it gets. It is no easy matter to get a
sight of this curious performance, because as soon as a
European comes walking along the hammering stops,
and nothing more than mere gun practice se^ns to
be going on. The Eskimos are rather shy of their
characteristic little ways ; and, of course, to European
eyes the gun was good enou^ to b^^in with, and the
hammering might easily be a laughing matter. As
the days passed on|towards Easter, and evoy day I
saw the same gun-practice, and gun-cleamng, and
cartridge-filling, I was surprised that there were no
accidents ; the people seem so careless of their fire-
arms that any one might well expect to hear of
several fatalities every year. But as I look back over
the eight years that J have known the Eskimos, I
can count the gun accidents on the fingers of one
hand, and I only know of one that ended fatally.
The fact is that their cardessness is more seeming
than real, though they do run the most foolish risks
at times.

While an Eskimo is engaged on the cleaning of
his gun it is quite a likely thing for the wad to stick.
The man pokes a plug of greasy tow into the
barrel, and the harder he pokes the tighter it wedges.
Perhaps he remembers to put the ramrod in at the
other end of the barrel, and push the wad out the
way it went in; perhaps he heats it red hot and
makes it bum its way through ; but as likely as not,
especially if he is an inexperienced young fellow, he
loses patience, and loads his gun and tries to fire the
obstruction out. I knew a man at Hebron who
this dodge. The wad was too tightly jammed

THE REINDEER HUNT

s^en to be shifted by a bullet, and the effect of the
bTremendous force was to raise a big blister on the
barrel I Happily the steel was too tough to explode,
or that adventurous young Eskimo would have been
^wiped out. He came running to the missionary,
iDTandishing his blistered gun. '* No good/' he said,
« < can't shoot with this gun any more — ^please cut him
short.'' So the missionary filed the banrel off behind
-the blister, and thus the gun became a sort of exag-
gerated pistol; and the proud and smiling owner
^was in time for the reindeer hunt, and did welL

So much for gun accidents ; but I must confess
that, rare as mishaps are, I used to watch the annual
gun-tinkering with a good deal of anxiety for the
safety of my apparently venturesome Eskimo
neighbours.

All this is a prelude to the reindeer hunt ; and at
last the great day comes, and with shoutings and
cracking of whips the sledges are away in the dark
of the morning, and the hunters have started. I
have watched them off in the gathering light, stem-
faced and eager, each man to his own sledge, and
mostly alone. A boy of thirteen is handy with a
gun, and useful to take care of the dogs ; but smaller
folk must stay at home, beseech they never so prettily.
The reindeer hunt is no time for useless weight upon
the sledge : I knew a man who took his wife with
him, but the lady had to walk the seventy or eighty
miles home, trailing laboriously [beside the sledge,
because there was such a load of meat and skins
that the dogs could pull no more ; and up the hills
she tasted the realities of the reputed third-class
passage of the old English coaching days — *' Get off

and shove."

5eS6

THE REINDEER HUNT

On Easter Tuesday morning the sledgfes make
their start, and track westward up the frozen rivers
and through the ¥anding valleys to the moss-covo:^
wilderness where the reindeer find their food. The
hunters have no luggage on their sledges : no tent,
no sleeping gear, only a scrap of dried seal meat or
fish for themselves and the dogs, and a gun, an axe,
a knife, a packet of sticking plaster for the inevitable
cuts, and a tin of grease for their sunburnt lips and
cheeks — that is their whole equipment, with the
occasional addition of a kettle for the making of a
cup of Eskimo tea, weak as water, and flavoured
with a mouthful of molasses out of a bottle.

They start together, but after a while they get
separated, and travel in ones and twos, or alone.
This man's dogs are slow, and lag behind ; the other
man wants to try such and such a valley instead of
the beaten trail ; and so they separate.

When night comes they build snow huts for
shelter, and sleep on a bed of dogs' harness spread on
the hard snow floor — ^not for any great comfort there
is in it, but because if they left it outside the dogs
would devour it in the night. In the morning each
man boils his own tea and munches his own solitary
feed of dried meat or ship's biscuits, harnesses his
team, and drives on alone. Alone he travels where
his fancy leads him : he will find the deer. Solitude
has no terrors for the Eskimo; it wakens his best
instincts ; it matters not that he meets nobody, sees
nobody ; alone he finds his way to the hunt and back
again, trusting to his marvellous memory for land-
marks, and guided by the stars and the sunrise. ^ ^

It was a bleak, raw morning when I first saw the

reindeer hunters start: they had their skin clothes

S86

THE REINDEER HUNT

tied round with scarves to keep the wind out, and
they had their heads down as they faced the bleak
^usts. Before ten o'clock a hurricane was raging,
and I feared for the safety of the men. But they
came back, with the storm roaring behind them;
first Jerry, then Abia, then others in twos and
threes, all with the same tale — '^Ajomarpok (it is
impossible), we must start again to-morrow." *' Are
you all safe ? " I asked them ; and Jerry counted them
over on his fingers. "Yes,'* he said, "we are all
here : all except Johannes." " And Johannes, where
is he ? " " Atsuk " — the laconic answer, so character-
istic of the Eskimo — " I don't know." But I was
anxious. "Undt," they said — as if to say, "Just
don't you bother your head about Johannes; you
can't lose him, we all know that He's safe enough."

Next day was stormy again, and there was no
Johannes. I thought of search parties, but the
people only smiled ; and, when the weather cleared,
off they went again with their dogs and their sledges,
with never a word about the missing man. For ten
days nothing happened ; then the women waiting on
the hill yelled " Kemmutsit, kemmutsit " (a sledge, a
sledge), and I climbed the hill and saw a dot of a
sledge and a tiny bliur of dogs with an active little
ant of a driver slipping slowly down from the woods
at the mouth of the big river to the wood-cutters'
track over the ice.

"Johannes, immakka," they said, and strolled

down the hill to meet him. And Johannes it was,

smiling and happy, and brown and well; proudly

shoving at a sledge piled high with meat and skins,

and shouting and cooing and chuckling to the toiling

dogs,
t S87

THE REINDEER HUNT

Willing women tore the pile to pieces, and carried
it into the hut ; an army of smaU boys fought for the
privilege of unharnessing the dogs — ^no doubt to the
huge disgust of the poor dogs, that had to wait with
what patience they could muster until the scuffling
was finished, thankful at last to slink out of the way
of the tumbling mob; and Johannes himself seized
a great pile of antlers that had topped the load, and
brought them over for me to dioose a pair for mysel£
I looked at the happy little man ; and there was a
picture in my mind dl the time of a solitary little
fur-clad Eskimo driving a team of ten wolfish and
hungry dogs into the very teeth of an Arctic storm.
** Why did you not turn back with the others," I
asked him. Johannes's eyes twinkled. ^* It is quite
a long time since I slept in a snow house," he said,
^' so I built a snow house instead of turning back,
and sat inside and listened to the storm. It was
splendid And now I am the first home with meat.
I will go and fetch you a leg."

Year by year the same scenes come: the start

on Easter Tuesday, the daily tramp of the women

to the top of the look-out hill, the daily chatter

over the work. Three days have passed. "Ah,"

say the women, "our men have found reindeer; if

they had not they would have come home before

this, for gthey have only three days' food. Nakom^k^

soon we shall be tasting tuktuvinemik " (reindeer

flesh). And the men I It is the time of their

lives I How graphically they tell of the keen moment

when they first see the deer. Cunning fellows, away

they circle so as to come upon them from the lee

side, and if they cannot see the herd, but only find

tracks, they know how far away they are by the

888

THE REINDEER HUNT

£reshness of the spoor. They turn theur sledges
upside down before they get within range, and
make the team lie down ; then the] dogs are safe,
for they cannot drag an upturned sledge. Woe
betide the luckless hunter who lets his dogs get
too close : away they go — ^no power can stop them —
they are as keen as wolves to do a little hunting
for themselves, and for the nonce they have become
wolves again.

One man described to me how he came upon
the deer suddenly. He* was driving his dogs along
a winding track, when, on rounding a bend, he
found himself driving into the midst of a herd.
^* Kappianarm§k," he said, and waved his; arms to
picture his excitement. ''No good, dogs no good,
tuktu too close" — and there he was, wildly trjring
to make the most of what was a very fleeting
opportunity in every sense of the term.

My ndghboiu^ liked to talk about the reindeer

himt. ** Ah," they said, '' it is fine to see the herd

upon the hillsides, all grey and white like the snow

upon the rocks. Yes, there are many tuktu : you

may watch them all day, marching along the hills,

more and more and always more, a great, great

number. Ah, it is fine to watch them — but only

Eskimo eyes can see them, because our eyes are

made for hunting. There they graze, digging through

the snow with their forefeet to get at the moss

underneath. Often they dig through much snow,

more than the height of a man; but they always

find the moss, because they can smell it with their

feet 1 It is fine to see them — and all the cows have

their little calves beside them, and the old bull is

keeping watch. When we shoot the cow, the little

S89

THE REINDEER HUNT

calf will not go away ; it stays close to its dead
mother and noses her and cries. We ' shoo ' it away,
and make it nm after the herd: but sometimes it
will not go, and we must kill it too. That is no
good ; it has fine meat, and its skin is soft for clothes
for the baby, but it b better to let it live and
grow big for next year.**

- However much the seals may mean to the
Eskimos, it always seemed to me that the reindeer
hunt was the big event of the hunter's year. There
never was such excitement as when the sledges
were sighted — such roars of welcome, sudi a stampede
over the ice, such a willing crowd to help with the
groaning sledge. The dogs used to look behind them,
wondering why the load was so light; they lifted
up their noses and began to trot, and the sledge
came lurching over the rough track among Uie
hummocks and stopped with a jerk at the hunter's
door. In a twinkling the housewife is choosing a
side for chops, and within an hour the hut is packed
with friends and relations and casual visitors, chew-
ing with the utmost gusto at one of the greatest
luxuries they know — ^the first of the reindeer meat.

S40

CHAPTER XIX

The Spring Futting — Seal-hunting among the Floes —
Tent Life — ^The Hunteb's Return

SOON after the home-coming of the last of the
reindeer-hunters a new excitement began.
Spring was in the air, though the mice and the little
snow-buntings were the only living sign of it ; the ice
was beginning to crack, and the Eskimos were eager
to get their spring flitting over while travelling was
safe and easy. Labrador was beginning to wear its
spring dress» which is another way of saying that the
snow was melting and making the whole place slushy
in the daytime, and the black rock was peeping
through upon the hillsides. All this came about in
the month of May, when the air was warm by day
and the nights were short and chilly; and when, as
the mornings passed, I discovered that one family
after anothn had moved off in the small hours, I
made up my mind that I would have a picture of
the flitting. When I walked along the village in the
evening there was a bustle of packing outside many
of the houses, but at four in the morning, when I
came out with my camera, there was nothing but a .
glimpse of the tail of a sledge as it careered round the
bend out of the bay. I gathered that the people had
been up most of the night, for when an Eskimo sets
his mind on doing a thing there is very little rest for
him until he has done it. During the day I came

upon Jakobus polishing his sledge runners, a sure

241 a

THE REINDEER HUNT

deer hunt was coming. Presently the word went

round that the Nautsertortut (scouts) were out» and

the excitement became intense. This was early in

March, and all day long the people were going in

twos and threes to the top of the nearest hill, to

watch the sledge track for the home-coming of the

scouts. Custom has fixed Easter Tuesday as the

day for the beginning of the hunt, and although the

custom is a comparatively new one, introduced to

give the hunters the opportunity of attending the

special services in the church during the Passion

Week, it is very loyally observed : no Eskimo would

dream of cutting the services to go a-hunting, but so

eager are they to have everything ready, and so full

are they of the all-important subject of the reindeer,

that before Easter comes several of the men will

certainly go to spy out the land and to bring back

reports of the probable whereabouts of the deer.

This is especially the case when Easter falls late;

and when I missed this or that familiar face about

the village and asked *^ Jonase nannek& ? " I was able

to anticipate the answer, '* Nautsertorpok ^' (he has

gone to scout). The scouts seldom bring home any

venison ; they have done their part if they bring

home a report, such as ^' I saw no reindeer yet," or

** I have seen tracks, kannitom6k6rput " (they seem to

be near) ; or, best of all, '^ I saw three deer in the

distance, sivorli6jut (the leaders) probably.'* Then

the excitement bubbles over into energy. Men

stand grouped round sledges on the snow, planing

and smoothing and polishing the runners, binding up

slack joints and patching weak places with iron

plates ; harpoons are shoved among the rafters of the

roof, and kajaks are hoisted on poles, out of reach of

S82

THE REINDEER HUNT

the prowling dogs; women are stitching as if for
dear life, getting the boots and clothing ready for
the great occasion ; there is stir and bustle all day
long.

To my mind the most interesting of all these
preparations is the mending of the guns. I had seen
them at this odd occupation many times before I
discovered what they were about

A man wanders out of his hut with a gun upon

his shoulder and a cluster of fiiends at his heels. He

sits down upon a lump of ice» and some lad or other

hurries off to set a mark on one of the hummocks,

fifty or sixty yards away. Then the firing begins,

and after each shot there is a hubbub of voices, and

the gun is passed from hand to hand. Perhaps some

famous hunter tries a shot, and delivers a slow and

weighty opinion, whereupon the voices start jabbering

again. When he thinks the trial has been sufficient

to assure him of the weaknesses of his weapon, the

owner of the gun hammers the barrel with a stone

and tries another shot. It is not likely that one

hammering wiU satisfy him; perhaps he has

^* straightened " it a little too much, and must give

it a few thumps on the other side : he smacks away

at it with his stone, and cocks his eye along it and

hammers again, and tries another shot; and so the

performance goes on, to the accompaniment of serious

and critical remarks, until the gun is ** mended." It

matters not the least what sort of a gun it be ; a new

and costly rifle gets just the same treatment as the

veriest old blunderbuss with its stock bound round

with twine: whatever the gun, the barrel must be

made to accord with Eskimo ideas of straightness ;

and the queer thing is that the owner of the gun,

888

THE REINDEER HUNT

once it is properly *' mended/' can shoot with the
most deadly aim. It seems to suit him the better far
the hammering it gets* It is no easy matter to get a
sight of this curious performance, because as soon as a
European comes walking along the hammering stops,
and nothing more than mere gun practice seems to
be going on. The Eskimos are rather shy of their
characteristic little ways ; and, of course, to £uropeaD
eyes the gun was good enough to begin with, and the
hammering might easily be a laughing matter. As
the days passed onftowards Easter, and every day I
saw the same gun-practice, and gun-deaning, and
cartridge-filling, I was surprised that there woe no
accidents ; the people seem so careless of their fire-
arms that any one might well expect to hear of
several fatalities every year. But as I look back over
the eight years that J have known the Eskimos, I
can count the gun accidents on the fingers <^ one
hand, and I only know of one that ended fatally.
The fact is that their carelessness is more seeming
than real, though they do run the most foolish risk
at times.

THE REINDEER HUNT

to be shifted by a bullet, and the effect of the
remendous force was to raise a big blister on the
3axrel 1 Happily the steel was too tough to explode,
>r "that adventurous young Eskimo would have been
iviped out. He came running to the missionary,
brandishing his blistered gun. '^ No good/* he said,
'* can't shoot with this gun any more — ^please cut him
short." So the missionary filed the band off behind
ttie blister, and thus the gun became a sort of exag-
^^erated pistol; and the proud and smiling owner
^WB3 in time for the reindeer hunt, and did welL

All this is a prelude to the reindeer hunt ; and at
last the great day comes, and with shoutings and
cracking of whips the sledges are away in the dark
of the morning, and the hunters have started. I
have watched them off in the gathering light, stem-
faced and eager, each man to his own sledge, and
mostly alone. A boy of thirteen is handy with a
gun, and useful to take care of the dogs ; but smaller
folk must stay at home, beseech they never so prettily.
The reindeer himt is no time for useless weight upon
the sledge : I knew a man who took his wife with
him, but the lady had to walk the seventy or eighty
miles home, trailing laboriously [beside the sledge,
because there was such a load of meat and skins
that the dogs could pull no more ; and up the hills
she tasted the realities of the reputed third-class
passage of the old English coaching days — ** (^et off

and shove."

885

THE REINDEER HUNT

On Easter Tuesday morning the sledges make
their start, and track westward up the firozen rivers
and through the winding valleys to the moss-covered
wilderness where the reindeer find their food. The
hunters have no luggage on their sledges : no tent,
no sleeping gear, only a scrap of dried seal meat or
fish for themselves and the dogs, and a gun, an axe,
a knife, a packet of sticking plaster for the inevitable
cuts, and a tin of grease for their sunburnt lips and
cheeks — ^that is their whole equipment, with the
occasional addition of a kettle for the making of a
cup of Eskimo tea, weak as water, and flavoured
with a mouthfiil of molasses out of a bottle.

It was a bleak, raw morning when I first saw the

reindeer hunters start: they had their skin clothes

986

THE REINDEER HUNT

tied round with scarves to keep the wuxl out» and
they had their heads down as they faced the bleak
^usts. Before ten o'clock a hurricane was raging,
and I feared for the safety of the men. But they
came back, with the storm roaring behind them;
first Jerry, then Abia, then others in twos and
threes, all with the same tale — ^^Ajomarpok (it is
impossible), we must start again to-morrow." *^ Are
you all safe ? " I asked them ; and Jerry counted them
over on his fingers. " Yes,'* he said, " we are all
here : all except Johannes." ^^ And Johannes, where
is he ? " " Atsuk " — the laconic answer, so character-
istic of the Eskimo — " I don't know." But I was
anxious. •* Un^t," they said — as if to say, " Just
don't you bother your head about Johannes; you
can't lose him, we all know that. He's safe enough."
Next day was stormy again, and there was no
Johannes. I thought of search parties, but the
people only smiled ; and, when the weather cleared,
off they went again with then* dogs and their sledges,
with never a word about the missing man. For ten
days nothing happened ; then the women waiting on
the hill yelled ** Kemmutsit, kemmutsit " (a sledge, a
sledge), and I climbed the hill and saw a dot of a
sledge and a tiny blur of dogs with an active little
ant of a driver slipping slowly down from the woods
at the mouth of the big river to the wood-cutters'
track over the ice.

'^Johannes, immakka," they said, and strolled
down the hill to meet him. And Johannes it was,
^niling and happy, and brown and well; proudly
shoving at a sledge piled high with meat and skins,
and shouting and cooing and chuckling to the toiling

dogs.
I 887

SEALHUNTING AMONG THE FLOES

flitters chase the seak among the floating ice-pans.
Boats and kajaks are the order of the hunt, and speed
is the great thing needed, because the seals have lost
their winter coat of fat, and sink as soon as they are
dead* A wounded seal dives, or, if too hard hit to
dive, floats, flapping its flippers, on the surface ; a dead
seal sinks, and because he does not want to lose it^
the hunter who uses a gun makes a frantic dash for
the place where the seal showed itself, paddling or
rowing his hardest as soon as his shot is fired. The
men, and boys too, for that matter, are complete
masters of their kajaks, wonderfuUy speedy and
remarkably safe, but they are not so versed in what
I might call acrobatic kajaking as the Greenland
Eskimos. Nothing delighted my Okak neighbours
better than to be told about the Karfilit (Green-
landers) ; they listened open-mouthed to any news
of these Innuit over the water, and feasted their eyes
on the photographs of the fleets of short kajaks at of
the people in their quaint costumes ; they stared with
wonder when they heard how the Greenlanders can
turn themselves and their kajaks right side up if they
happen to upset, for the Labrador men have forgotten
how to do that.

Most of the men prefer guns to harpoons for the
spring hunting, and take their stand in a smaU boat
with a boy as oarsman ; the boy's duty is to steady
the boat on the water, and then to ply his oars wilji
all his might as soon as the shot is fired ; and I have
watched the boats drifting aimlessly among the floes,
the man with gun poised ready, the boy with oars
upon the water, letting the boat turn idly round and
round because of the impossibility of knowing where

a seal's head might pop up. It must be exasperating

S46

TENT LIFE

to a man to see the head come up and gaze and sink,
all in a moment, in an unexpected quarter, so that he
has hardly time to train his gun upon it ; but, how-
ever aggravating the seals may be, an Eskimo does
not lose his temper over his hunting; and as for
swearing — why, the Eskimo language contains no
oaths, and the few mild remarks that an Eskimo can
make in his own tongue, such as ** Kappianarm§k "
(how dreadful), or " Ai-ai-kuUuk ** (that miserable
thing), he makes where they can be applied literally.
Useless expletives are as foreign to his nature as
they are to his vocabulary.

Not all the families that flit in the springtime go
seal-hunting among the breaking ice. There are
some whose thoughts turn to the trout that have
spent the winter in the ponds among the hills, and
that are waking from their lethargy for the spring
run to the sea ; and so a good many of the sledges
are piled high with nets amid all the other luggage,
and the drivers turn the dogs' noses west instead of
eastward when the sledges reach the mouth of the
bay. As for as money goes, trout-fishing is a more
paying game than seal-hunting; it is always fairly
certain, and salt trout fetches a good price at the
store.

The favourite way is to spread nets in the
shaUow water where the big rivers run into the
sea, and clear them after every tide.

Clearing the nets sounds a small thing, but it

means more than just taking out the great wriggling

fish ; if a man wants to have a good haul every time,

he needs to clear away every fragment of weed, and

that will take him the best part of the day: Floating

pieces of ice must be towed to a safe distance, and

847

TENT LIFE

rents In the net must be mended; and, with one

thing and another^ the men are busy enough, and

are quite willing to leave the women to split and

salt the trout. Some of the families are splendid

fisher-folk ; one little man calmly answered '^ Forty

barrels" when I asked him how many trout he

generally managed to get in a season.

I had a little trout net of my own in Okak Bay,

just opposite the hospital, and I could often see by

the commotion in the water whether there were any

fish in the net. I usually did the fisherman's work

myself — ^when there were only a few fish. But if a

strong tide came and brought twenty or thirty fish,

my hands refused to do it; after half-an-hour's

dabbling in the icy water my fingers were numb and

my wrists used to ache with the cold, and I had to

call an Eskimo boy to finish the job. Eskimo hands

are made for cold work; ice and water are very

ordinary things for them to touch — and, once again,

I cannot but feel that the Eskimo is the very man

for the Labrador life.

' / The village seemed very desolate while the people

^were away at their trouting and seaUng places ; there

were only the workpeople about the store and Mission

premises to give the place a touch of life ; and during

the daytime, while liiey were all at work, it seemed

like some deserted village of a bygone generation.

The windows were boarded up, doors were locked

or fastened with tags of rope, and only the savage

mother-dogs, that nursed their broods of puppies

under the doorsteps, witnessed to the fact that these

huts, looking so tumble-down now that the snow

had melted away from them and had washed the

packing of moss out of the crevices, were, after all,

248

it
11

THE HUNTERS RETURN

the homes of families of hunters who were plying
their craft in their aceeustomed way, and who would
return when winter came again and turn them once
more into homes.

After the last of the spring flitters had gone a
change came over the ice on the bay. Cracks and
pools appeared, scraps of wood along the sledge
track sank into the ice by the warmth they absorbed
from the sun, and dotted the path with holes ; the
cracks grew and multiplied and met, the tides oozed
upon the beach and the stones began to show, until,
slowly and quietly, the great stretch of ice changed
from a floating sheet to a dose-packed mass of
floating pieces. The tides shuffled them and spread
them ; and, by the last week in June, we were only
waiting for a strong west wind to carry the ice away
to the^ open ocean and set us a-talking of summer.
As I took one of my walks through the silent village
early in the July of 1904, enjoying all the new ex-
hilaration of open water (for the ice had floated off
the day before and made us feel that we were at last
living by the seaside again), I heard a sudden shout.
A babel of shrill voices was rising from the blubber
yard, where the women were chopping up blubber
for the steeping-tanks ; and as I turned to pick my
way along the sloppy path, all criss-crossed and
channelled by scores of tiny rivulets that trickled
from the melting snow on the hillside, I fell in with
a rushing procession of children and dogs all making
for the landing-place. The jetty in front of the
Mission house looked busy; it was crowded with
workpeople, all yelling ** Umiat " (a boat) at the top
of their voices. The blubber-women had left their

greasy task, and were there in all the realism of oil-

S49

THE HUNTER'S RETURN

sodden sackcloth overalls ; the two old widows who
had been digging in the garden had flung down their
spades and were running as £ast as their old legs
would carry them ; the cooper had dropped his tools
and left his shop to join in the excitement; the
chinmey-sweep, black and grimy, was scrambling
down from the roof, bursting to tell what he had
seen from his perch ; the missionary had his head out
of window, with a telescope to his eye, trying to
make out what was coming ; everybody was shouting
and jabbering and laughing. We are a strange folk
in Labrador ; ours is a quiet, humdrum sort of life,
for the most part, and we get into the habit of
making a great to-do about the little varieties that
come our way.

After all, this cry of ^^ A boat '' only meant that
one of the hunters was coming home ; but it was
the first boat of the season, and that made all the
difierence. The chimney-sweep had seen it first,
and had given a shout that roused the blubber-
women in the yard below; and so the commotion
began. Soon I saw the boat for myself, a small
brown speck on the water, near the southern point
of the mouth of the bay. ^* Two masts,*' said the
chinmey-sweep : to my eyes the thing was only a
brown dot. '' Three people at the oars,'' said a voice,
"and a woman sitting in the bows." "Yes, yes
(chorus), a woman in the bows." "Jonasekut,
immakka " (probably Jonas's people), said the cooper.
" lUale " (of course), chorussed the others, " it must
be Jonas and his two boys at the oars, and Prisdlla
in the bows."

Then there was quiet for a few minutes, while the
brown dot grew steadily larger. At last it turned to

THE HUNTER'S RETURN

^ tack and I saw the two masts and the four people.

t '^ lUa, ilia/' cried a shrill old voice, ** it is Jonasekut ;

'i see that white patch on the sail ; I helped Friscilla to
sew that on." ^* Boat seems loaded," said the cooper ;

{f ** plenty seals, maybe." ^^ Nakomdk " (how thankfid),

^ said the chorus ; and so the excited talk went on until
the boat, with a last long tack, swept gently along-
side the jetty. " Jonase-ai," was the greeting — a
sort of familiar ** Hello, Jonas." *^ Ah," said Jonas,
'* Aksuse " ; and he began to hand out the meat. His

; gi™g ,«m«l qmte Ldiserimu^te, «d .v«ybody

J got a share. ChUdren ran home, chattering and
laughing with glee, carrying between them great
slabs of raw flesh, with a train of dogs slinking
furtively behind them in hopes of an accidental share ;
older folks followed more sedately, hugging bowls
and tubs of meat, but all with the same delighted
grin upon their faces in anticipation of that most
luscious of all Eskimo dainties, fresh-killed seal.

I really wondered, as I watched the scene, whether
the hunter had anything left for himself. He had,
but no more than enough for a good square meal ; he
was quite content to follow the generous custom
of the people, and share with all and sundry; and
the skin and blubber were his only payment for his
trouble and skill. He carried the liver to the
missionary, and as I watched him I thought that in
his open-handed giving there was just the same spirit
that prompted little John to open the circle at the
dinner bowl to the poor young man.

This home-coming was the first of many, since
the open water gave the people the means of travel-
ling for which they had been waiting ; one day it

was a seal-hunter, another a trout-fisher from the

S61

THE HUNTER^S RETURN

mouth of the big river, and every time there was the
same shout, the same eager stampede, the same
chatter of anticipation, the same trot home with
great hunks of meat or bunches of silvery fish,
and the same big gipsy-pots bubbling over the open-
air fires and promising a splendid feast for everybody.

ass

CHAPTER XX

CoD-FI8HlNG — ^TeNTS A PoLAR BeAR — MoSQUITOES BuiLOlNO

THE spring seal hunt brings the Eskimo hunting
year to a close ; with no furs to trap, no seals
to spear, no reindeer to chase, the Labrador summer
would find the hunter a disconsolate being were it
not for the cod-fishing.

This is the great thing that makes the months of
August and September the busiest in the whole year.
Day in and day out the boats are on the water, with
men and boys sitting in them fishing from morning
till night — ^aye, and all night long if fish are plentiful.
It is a big test of Eskimo patience, to jerk the bright
leaden lure, with its two barbed hodcs, up and down
within a few feet of the bottom of the sea ; jerk, jerk,
jerk, hour after hour, when fish are rather scarce and
only the plodder can hope to succeed; but there
come times when the fish are so plentiful that they
are on the hook before it is well sunk, and there
is a spice of excitement in hauling up as fast as your
hands can pull, and dropping the hook again for
more and more and more. But in spite of the
excitement, *' jigging," as it is called among the
fishermen, is horribly cold work on dull, bleak days,
and I was not surprised to find the Eskimos wearing
gloves of seal leather on their plump hands to prevent
the line from chafing them. In ordinary times the
men and boys do the fishing, and leave the women

and girls to attend to the splitting and salting, but

S58

COD-FISHING

when they light upon one of the vast shoals of fish
that seem to swarm from place to place, the whole
family goes out in the boat, and the baby in the
mothers' hood is the only one that seems too small to
ply the jigger, and tiny children somehow manage,
with much struggle and determination, to land fish
almost as big as themselves.

The quantity of codfish is astonishing; they
must literally teem in countless myriads along^ the
coast ; for year after year not only the Eskimos, but
hundreds of schooner crews from Newfoundland,
gather them by barrelfuls — I might say tons — and
year after year the fish we there, seemingly as
plentiful as ever. It is a fine living, the cod-fishing ;
the people look to it for their main supply of those
things that money can buy, and a good season may
not only pay the debts which a man has made at
the store during the winter and spring, but give him
new tools, a new gun, a harmonium, or even a so&
for his house.

Though the drying of the fish is a thing that
they have had to learn, they put every bit as much
care into it as they do into all the hunting which is
natural to them; and I have been amused to see
how they scurry when a sudden shower of rain
comes and threatens to damp the half-dry fish that
lies upon the rocks.

This is the time when the ships and the visitors

come to Labrador ; the time when the cod-fishing is

in full swing, and when, as a visitor cmce said to me,

" The whole place smells of fish " ; the time when

the Eskimos live scattered along the shores of the

bays and runs. There are a few little huts and iglos

still to be seen, where families have found a good

S64

TENTS

fishing-place and return to it year after year; but

most of the people live in tents. Tents are ideal

summer dwellings for a people who are, at heart,

wanderers ; and the Eskimos are restless beings-^they

N like to follow the call of their hunting, and to make

\tbeir temporary home where their work is. Not

many years ago the tents, all along the coast, were

of reindeer skins stitched together with sinew and

stretched on poles with the hairy side outward ; and

no doubt some of the people will live in skin tents to

the end, so loth are they to give up the customs of

their lives.

But calico tents are becoming very popular — and

a good thing, too. They are lighter and airier than

skin tents, and afford just as good a protection from

the weather; but the Eskimos like them because

they are so easily mended. If an August storm

tears a tent to ribbons or hurls it bodily into the

raging sea, the owner and his family have no

need to spend the rest of the season packed like

sardines on the floor of some other man's tent,

waiting for the next year's reindeer hunt to come

round before making a bid for a new one ; no, when

the storm has passed, the father takes his boat and

hies him to the store, and spends a few dollars of his

fish-money on a roll of calico which his wife will very

speedily turn into a tent.

But even this is not the chief reason to Eskimo

minds. Portability is the thing; and a tent that

packs up into a neat little bundle, and can be stowed

away in the bottom of a boat or can be used to cover

the load on a sledge without making the pile too

high and top-heavy for the passengers, is a grand

thing compared with the bulky heap of reindeer skin

256

TENTS

that takes up so much room. Another reason that
has struck me in favour of the calico tent is that
calico is not particularly tempting to the appetite of
the dogs. I can well imagine that a tent of dried
reindeer skins might prove quite a toothsome meal
for a pack of famished sledge dogs; but I have
never heard of them devouring a calico tent whole-
sale, though they are not averse to an occasional
chew at the oil-sodden margins.

And so the Eskimos spend their summer, dwell-
ing in tents, fishing and drying their catch upon the
rocks, until by the end of September the main rush
of the codfish is over, and the people make their way
home again to the Mission villages, bringing their
fish bundled ready for the Harmony to take it to
market.

In the old days, I suppose, before there inras a
market for their fish, the people did as I found ihem
doing at KiUinek — they hunted the seals and the
white bears. But the seals are gone northward;
they have learnt better than to stay about the villages
of the Eskimos, and nowadays do no more than pass
them by in the autunm and the spring. As for the
white bears, a stray one sometimes comes along the
coast with the ice, and becomes the centre of a
furious hunt and the cause of a great deal of chat-
tering about " nennok " (white bear) over the pipes
in the evening ; but the most of the nennoks have
retreated to tibe Button Islands and other desolate
spots where there is no smell of man to disturb
them.

A beady-eyed little Eskimo came into my room

one evening, hugging a bulky package which he

dumped upon the floor.

266

A POLAR BEAR

^' Nennok,'' he explained, ^* half of him : you buy
him, eh ? "

He um*olled his package and named his price,
and I found myself examining the hinder part of a
big bearskin.

•• Where is the rest of himi '* I asked ; and then
I got the story.

It appears that this man and another were out
in a little boat, jigging for codfish, when they saw a
white bear swimming in the sea. Like true Eskimos
they fell to their oars, and got the boat between
the bear and the shore, so as to head him off!
They had no gun to shoot him, but this was a
secondary consideration; the great idea was that
they were within hunting distance of a nennok, and
hunt him they would. They chased him to and
fro until he began to tire, and then they assailed
him with their oars, hammering prodigiously at his
head. He tried to get into the boat, and at that
they hammered the more, until they had him
stunned and helpless. Then they towed his carcase
ashore, and set about sharing him.

It did not happen to strike them that they might
sell the skin and divide the money, and so reap a
reasonable reward for their adventure ; no, they cut
the bear in two, and each appropriated an end.
They were disgusted to find that they had entirely
spoilt the market value of the skin : no trader wanted
half a bear 1

That was the only polar bear that visited Okak

during my five years there; and I have that piece

of bearskin to-day to remind me of the marvellous

pluck of those two Eskimos, who attacked a polar

bear with no better weapons than their oars.

257 K

MOSQUITOES

Though the summer may sound a very tame
time from a hunter's point of view, there is one
occupation that keeps everybody busy. I mean,
fighting the mosquitoes.

From the beginning of July to the end of
August, and even later, the summer air of Labrador
swarms with (countless hosts of bloodthirsty gnats.
The supply is unlimited.

Mosquitoes, we call them ; and rightly, I suppose,
for their scientific name is Culex; and they live
fully up to the evil repute that their fiamily has
for biting and stinging and bu2szing and swarming
around. How, thought I, can one be expected to
enjoy this lovely scenery, these otherwise delightful
walks among the hills, if one is compelled to be
encased in a gauze veil and a pair of thick gloves ?
The buzzing creatures perch on the meshes of your
veil, and you can see them striving to get through ;
if you have not adopted Eskimo boots, which reach
up to your knees, they climb about your knitted
socks, and sit there, biting yoiur ankles between the
strands of wool, and you can almost imagine them
kicking their heels with delight at the convenience
of having something to stand on while they ply their
nefarious trade.

There is a hideous fascination about watching

the mosquitoes: you may slap and dance, but

however many you may kill there are always plenty

waiting their turn, and the only satisfaction you get

is in the knowledge that new-comers receive an

extra share of their attentions, and that some day

you will be hardened. The first bites may produce

really alarming results. I am sure that I took all

due precautions, the first ni^t that I slept on shore

258

MOSQUITOES

in Labrador, but a mosquito must have crawled
under my door in the darkness, for in the morning
I could only open one eye, and the question that
greeted me at the breakfast table was, *' Have you
bumped yourself?"' The first summer is a sort of
inoculation time ; afterwards the bites do not sting
and itch so badly as the first ones did, and you do
not notice the attentions of the gnats nearly so much.
Some of the oldest residents seem quite hardened or
bite^proof, or perhaps they are too highly flavoured
with tobacco. This last holds good for the Eskimos :
they light their pipes and go about their work,
perhaps with a handkerchief over their necks, perhaps
without, while the mosquitoes buzz about and try to
dodge the smoke.

I used to find a veil rather a trying and *' head-
achey " thing, and spent a good deal of thought in an
attempt to devise some other method of protection,
but without much success. Measures which act
very well with the milder kind of flies are quite use-
less with our ravenous Labrador mosquitoes.

One adventure that I had in my search for a
gnat-cure may be worth recording. It happened to
be church-cleaning time. The church was in the
hands of a bevy of muscular Christians in the form
of Eskimo women, and as the weather was fine the
missionary decided to hold service out of doors.
Would I give the people an address? It was a
charming day towards the end of July, one of those
calm days when Labrador seems at its best ; but, as
is their habit on a warm day, the mosquitoes were
holding carnival My listeners were all busy fly-
flapping; but a man who essays to deliver an

address cannot be all the time whisking gnats off

269

MOSQUITOES

his face, nor could I imagine myself talking fiom
within the stifling folds of a brilliant green veil, so I
sought advice. One good Samaritan in the company
proffered a compound of his own concoction, wfaidi
he firmly believed would frighten any ordinary
mosquito yards away; so I willingly and gladly
accepted the brown, gummy-looking stuff, and gave
my hands and face a good plastering with it Quite
likely all the strength or virtue had long ago evapo-
rated out of the compound, for it had little or no
smeU, and I realised afterwards, when it was too
late, that I had converted myself for all practical
purposes into an animated *^ fly-paper." For the
first few minutes the mosquitoes seemed rather
surprised; they buzzed round my face in an angry
swarm, but hesitated to dip their trunks into the
paint. At last a bold pioneer made a dash for my
nose, and stuck fast He hummed and buzzed and
struggled for his life.

This was more than flesh and blood could
stand ; I tried to brush him off— and squashed him I
That was bad enough; but worse was to follow,
for either the gnats were on their mettle, determined
to bite if they died for it, or else the tragic fate
of their leader fired them to frenzy, for they bit
and bit and bit ; and by the end of the hour I had
a fine swollen red face, shiny with treacle and all
dotted with black — and somebody told me that
I looked like a currant bun. That was the last
trial I made of amateur compounds: since then I
have confined myself to the *' dopes" that are to
be bought in the shops, and that are really of use.

I spent part of my first July in building the
bridge over the stream that runs between Okak

BUILDING

Hospital and the church. On the whole my four

workmen got on very weU» though they usually

wanted to do things in their own way» and got into

some amusing predicaments in consequence. I once

found them shaking their heads very seriously over

a beam that would not fit. They tried it one way,

and found it too long ; then they laboriously heaved

it round the other way, but it was still too long.

They had shaped and notched the ends, ready to

be dovetailed into place, but had forgotten to make

the beam the right length first. What must they

do ? Measure it, cut a piece off one end, and shape

the end again. " Ai, ai," they said, '' kappg, what

a lot of trouble." And then I stumbled over my

first great difficulty with the Eskimo language. I

rolled out a couple of long words, carefully compiled

from the grammar book, but I really did not know

whether I was saying ** Measure your beams first,

then notch them," or '* Notch your beams first and

then measure them " ; and I thought it well to give

a pantomimic demonstration, which I hope they

understood. Anyhow, we built the bridge, and it

looks all right to this day.

I was advised to get some painting done before

the mosquitoes became too plentiful, so I set a

party of workmen to paint the hospital as soon as

the bridge was ready. The painting passed off

pretty well, excepting that the dogs regarded our

paint — made of seal-oil and whiting, boiled together

— as a special sort of thick soup cooked for their

benefit, and devoured as much of it, and as many

of the paint-brushes, as they could get : they even

licked the walls clean, as high as they could reach,

after the workmen had gone home. On the whole

S61

BUILDING

the workless dogs in the summer time are a nuisance,
and it was partly on their account that I had to put
railings round the hospital. The roomy porch was
a haven of peace for them ; they used to wait on
the steps for the door to be opened, and then sneak
in and snuggle down in the hope of passing un-
obseryed. More than once they got beyond the
inner door, and came sUnking into the kitchen,
snuffling and whistling at the smell of cookery;
and then followed a nightmare chase, we shouting
and stamping, they tearing round and round in
a blind hunt for the way out. I sometimes dream
about them yet ; the din was awfiil : the great
hulking things ran round and round, upsetting chairs
and buckets, yelping and squealing, trying to hide
in impossible comers and crannies behind the water
tanks, getting more and more miserable and fright-
ened, until at last they found the door and scrambled
through it with terrified faces and drooping tails.
By the time the painting was done the cod-fishing
had commenced, and the men wanted to be off,
so I let them all go but the two carpenters, staid
and solid Eskimos both, and clever with their tools.
The idea I had in my mind was to put up a series of
posts, five feet and six inches high, fixed firmly to
a long beam buried in the sand of the foundation ;
to these posts we could fix a number of hurdle-like
railings, and have them removable so as to store
them in the loft before the winter storms began.
I fancy that the two carpenters were a trifle jealous
of each other, for the younger man was the cleverer,
and took the more responsible part of the work.
I gave him instructions to make the posts five feet

and six inches high, and he set to work amiably

S6S

BUILDING

enough. The other man asked my friend the
missionary, who was acting as adviser and interpreter
and general helper in difficulties, how high he should
make them.

'<Five feet, abvalo (and a half)," said the
missionary.

That was the starting-point of quite an argument
between the two Eskimos, and we found it necessary
to explain with the aid of the foot-rule that the two
things were the same. These men both knew
perfectly well how many inches there are in a foot ;
but I have often thought, since then, that our two
ways of putting it were not quite the same to
Eskimo minds.

Oh, those railings 1 I can see in my mind's eye a
row of tousled little heads, with bright little eyes all
peering to see what mystery there was behind them ;
and I laugh when I think how those heads used to
disappear if I tapped at the window, and leave
nothing but a row of little knuckles clinging, until
first one and then another mop of hair rose slowly to
view when those bright little Eskimo laddies thought
that the doctor had gone again.

26S

CHAPTER XXI

Startino thb Hospital — The Crowd and the SiNoiNa

AS the village was pretty well filled with people,
£\^ and most of the actual building work was
finished, I thought it a good plan to open the
hospital without further delay, and so allow things
to idiape themselves before the busiest of the winter's
bustle began.

The simplest plan would be, I thought, to have
the opening announced to the people in church after
one of the evening meetings, and the missionary
kindly agreed to do this.

The wording seemed ordinary enough to my
mind~^

"To-morrow the doors of the hospital will be
opened at nine o'clock in the morning '' —

Put into literal Eskimo ; but it must have been,
in some way or other, too blunt, for the people were
amazed beyond belief.

I see quite clearly that it would have been better
to make a long speech of explanaticm, because the
idea of a hospital was quite new to them; but I
know the Eskimo and the working of his mind in a
way that I did not at that time. The fact remains,
that the people were mystified. I was called back
into the church after the meeting, and found a rather
excited congregation, all eager to speak at once.

" Why must the people come to hospital at nine

o'clock ? "

964

STARTING THE HOSPITAL

<* Because it is a custom of all hospitals to fix
some such hpur."

^* Then are the people of England always ill at
nine o'clock in the morning? If I expected the
Eskimos always to be ill at a fixed time there was no
sense in it The people must be ill whenever they
wanted,"

I tried to argue — " Certamly the door is open at
all times for accidents and sudden sickness " — but it
was useless : they had got the idea into their heads
that some newfangled notion was being thrust upon
them, and, in the natural conservatism of their
minds, they resented it, just as they are inclined to
resent all other innovations at first sight. The only
possible thing to do, as I found all through my deal-
ings with my simple-minded neighbours, was to keep
to my word and let things shape themselves.

** Keep literally to what you say," said Mr. Simon :
^' any change of front makes the people suspicious."

I turned to the people : '* Tava " (finished), said
I, in my poor halting attempt at their language. '* I
shall say no more; the doors will be open at nine
to-morrow " — and then I left them.

No doubt they went home and palavered the
business half the night; and I was more than a
trifle worried, it seemed such a hard reception for
my cherished plans. But the missionary only smiled.
*' It will come out all right," he said.

In the morning there were three people waiting

for the opening of the doors of the new out-patients'

department, and I breathed freely again. It was all

right: the people were my friends. That was the

beginning; and morning by morning they came,

with their plaints and their troubles and their

S66

STARTING THE HOSPITAL

requests — odd and ludicrous and touching by turns.
One of the very first visitors was old Maria, the village
^^ character," a well-meaning old body, no doubt,
amiable and friendly, but not over-endowed with
reasoning powers. She gave a very chiuracteristic hint
of her idea of the functions of a hospital by asking
for "eye-medicine." and rambUng off immediately
into a long explanation. ** I have lost the cover of
my pipe," she said, and between the words she stooped
down and hitched a dingy and battered-looking
tobacco-pipe out of the leg of her boot. ** I have lost
the cover of it," she repeated, *' and the wind blows
the smoke into my eyes and makes them smart. I
want good medicine to cure that " 1 That word for
*' medicine" was one of the first of the many
curiosities of the Eskimo language that I learnt
Theur plan is to tack the ending ^* siumik " on to the
name for any part of the body where they have
pain, and so build up a word that means medicine
for that particular pain. Maria's request was a
simple one — ^ije-siumik (eye-medicine) — but some of
the others were not so plain. I remember one
square-shouldered little man, with a heavy mop of
hair streaked with grey, who marched solenmly in
and asked for ** tooth-medicine." The offer of some
toothache tincture caused him to shake his head
resolutely. ''Oukak" (no), he said, ** kikkiamik
piumavunga" (I want the iron sort), and down he
sat, pointing a stubby finger at a huge molar.
There was no mistaking his meaning, though it
may seem queer ** medicine " ; and very soon he
was ambling home with many smiles and mutterings
of ** Thankie " after the '* iron sort of tooth medicine "
had pulled out the offendiog tooth.

STARTING THE HOSPITAL

After that I thought it well to dig into the depths
of the grammar book, and I fomid that '* siut " or
'^siumik'' literally means <^ something used for."
That made it plain — ^^ something used for toothache/'
As if to make things more interesting, within the
next day or two I heard somebody talking about
** Sontage-siumik," meaning his '' Sunday clothes " :
but more was to follow, for a sledge driver came to
ask if I had ^' silla-siumik " (weather medicine) 1 This
was a puzzler ; but the man's restless eyes, roaming
over my walls, finally fixed their gaze on the baro-
meter, and I discovered that he wanted to know
what the '^ siUa-siut " (thing used for the weather)
had to say about to-morrow's weather prospects t

But it was not all humour at my nine o'clock
hour: never a day passed without its touches of
pathos, and sometimes of tragedy, too. The Eskimos
are very brave when there is pain to be borne, and
there are many instances of their endurance written
in the books at Okak Hospital. I remember how old
Rebekah came one day, nursing a wounded hand. She
is one of the stateliest of the village grandmothers, an
active old woman of sixty-five, with her teeth nearly
worn to the gums ; but, old as she is, she is well able
to take an oar in a boat — or a pair, for the matter of
that — and thinks nothing of trudging to and from
the woods, five miles away, to fetch broken branches
to replenish her stove. With proper Eskimo dignity
she came in and sat down, and composed herself to
tell her tale ; and all the while she was hugging her
left hand, swathed in a red bandanna handkerchief.

** I was making boots just now," she said, <' and

the leather-knife slipped and cut my thumb. Ai-ai,

it bled very much, and it was nearly cut off; but I

867

STARTING THE HOSPITAL

had my boot-needle threaded with ivalo (remdeer
smew), and I sewed my thumb with that, so that it
no longer bleeds ; and now I have eome to let you
bind it up/' And there and then the brave old
woman unwrapped her handkerchief and dispUyed
her hand, with a long wound neatly sewn up, stitch
upon 'stitch, in proper bootmaker's style t And I
think that the ending of the story is appropriate, for
old Rebekah's vitality and power of repair proved as
great as her fortitude.

This just serves to illustrate the native indifference
to pain; and even in the worst of sufferings their
attitude is the same. I have seen them, men and
women, in dingy little huts and in leaky calico tents,
lying on rough beds of moss and reindeer skins, silent
and uncomplaining, though their faces were blanched
and the beads of perspiration stood out under the
strain of physical suffering. The veiy thought calls
forth one's sympathy; and the pictures that crowd
before me as I write — pictures of people toiling up
the steps of the new hospital, with the marks of pain
upon their faces and a dumb and eager hopefulness
shining in their eyes — has left an impression on my
mind that time will never efface. A strangely attrac-
tive folk : with children's fears and childhood's quaint
ideas, and childhood's whims and fancies and un-
reasoning demands, but with a manly bravery in the
face of pain or danger, and a manly mastery of the
terrible rigours of their daily work, that call for
admiration.

Before very long the people were well enough

used to the working of a hospital to make the nine

o'clock hour a busy one ; and as I was slowly getting

a grip on the more everyday parts of the Eskimo

S68

THE CROWD AND THE SINGING

language I thought it would be an excellent plan to
start each day's work with morning prayers. I told
the people so. ** Nakom6k, nakom^ " (how thank-
ful), they said, and nodded, and nudged one another
in their appreciation of the idea. The word I
happened to use — ^the morning singing— caught their
fancy at once, for singing always appeals to them.
A grim-faced deputation called upon me to know if
it was true that there was going to be singing at nine
o'clock. " Yes," said I. " Then the people want to
know if they may come, even when they are not sick,
just for the singing, and then go home again." ^* By
all means, let them come and help with the singing ; "
and the deputation retired, smiling and nakom6k-ing.
** Now," thought I, " We are likely to have a crowd :
what are we to do for benches ? " I set a small boy to
scour the village for the two worthies who shared
the honourable and responsible position of public
carpenter; and when, after a due interval, they
arrived, having been discovered, without doubt,
sharing a solid meal of fresh seal meat in some
hunter's house, I took them into my plans. Peter
and David, the worthy carpenters in question, nodded
sagely and said ^^ Taimak " (so be it) ; and we made
our way to the attic. There we attacked the disused
packing-cases, and knocked them to pieces and pulled
the nails out, and planed the boards to a reasonable
smoothness, and by dint of much measuring and
sawing and hammering evolved a dozen very decent
little belches out of the pile. No Mission hospital
ever had cheaper furniture than our amateur benches ;
but they served their purpose, and, for all that I know
to the contrary, they are doing duty at Okak Hospital

to this day. On the advice of Peter and David we

969

THE CROWD AND THE SINGING

made them nice and low, to suit the short Eddmo
legs ; and though we did not paint them they always
looked spruce, for Sarah and Valeria, the two char-
women, took no end of pride in scrubbing them. I
was very well satisfied with the benches — ^because
the people liked them.

As I expected, the room was packed to the
utmost on the first day of the singing. There were
seats for about fifty, and as *' first come, first senred ^
was the rule, the people began to come early. By
a quarter to nine there was a crowd on the doorsteps
— ^not an orderly queue, by any means, but a jolly-
tempered mob, clinging to the railings and jostliiig to
get nearer to the door, and constantly reinforced
by new arrivals fix)m all parts of the village An
avalanche of boisterous humanity surged in and
nearly overwhelmed me when I opened the door upon
the stroke of nine; but it was only a momentary
boisterousness — at a word the avalanche changed to
an orderly procession.

That is one of the many things I like about the
Eskimos — ^they are staid and decorous in their natural
demeanour, and so, when it does happen that their
spirits bubble over and they begin to be noisy, they
are easy to control.

The benches were full long before the stream of

people had ceased, but the folks seemed determined

to get in; those who could not find room on the

benches squatted on the floor, and those who were

unable even to nudge their way into squatting-room

on the floor stayed in the passage or sat upon the

stairs, and we left the door open for their benefit

It was amusing, but quite characteristic, to observe

that the indefatigable old Maria had somehow

270

uinKler in her wbv. She ■• ■ InnoL Blkiiao, with
squkn face Uld hiffh cheelu, tmall evH mud black
; typicaU too. in her dupuulion, itolid, bul good-
<ound and friepdiy.

Okak Hospital

THE CROWD AND THE SINGING

managed to get the middle seat on the front row.
Among the people on the floor between the benches
I saw big Josef, the mightiest hunter (and therefore
the richest man) in Okak ; in heathen times he would
have been a sort of king among the people, because
he is both the tallest man and the best hunter among
them ; but he seemed quite happy on the floor.

We sang a well-known hymn, and the place shook
with the delightftil noise. I can see the picture as
I write, and I think that of all my memories of life
among the Eskimos the most inspiring is the memory
of that crowd of faces, all wrinkling with pleasure
and perspiring with the warmthT— and the tremendous
harmony that filled the room. I seem to hear the
music now; the women's clear voices trilling out
the tune, with the altos and tenors and basses blend-
ing admirably with them. Eskimos always sing
well, and faU into the parts of the music uncon-
sciously ; their voices are sometimes harsh and gruff,
but they are natural singers. Strange that they have
no music of their own 1 Weird rhythmic chantings
are all the music that the heathen Eskimo knows ;
but the soil is there in the people themselves, and
music has taken root and flourished among them.

That was the first of many happy mornings ; and
though the novelty of the thhig was a big attraction
in the beginning, the people stiU came when the
novelty had long since worn off, and morning by
morning, when nine o'clock struck, our benches were
packed with an eager crowd.

I soon found out what the people liked best;
new hymns were the great attraction. Sometimes
one or other of the missionaries would translate a
fresh hymn, and I had a busy day printing it on the

THE CROWD AND THE SINGING

little hand-press that some well-wisher had bequeathed
to the hospital Next morning a subdued buzz of
delight would greet the distribution of the printed
sheets. Once, I remember, I was too busy to print
a new hymn, so I wrote the words on a bladcboard
and hung it up in full view. The result -wns just
what I ought to have foreseen. When I went into
the room for the meeting everybody was whispering,
and all throu^ the reading the whispering and
muttering went on in a subdued sort of way; the
people were spelling through the new hynm. I
ought to have known that only a few of them
can read without making the words ; they need to
whisper or speak, or at least shape their lips to the
sound, before they get the meaning — they have not
the faculty of seeing sounds as we can. There are
exceptions; Jerry the organist and Juliana and
Benjamin, the school teachers, can read by thought
without any mouthing at alL But you can imagine
that roomful of people, eagerly spelling their way
through the words of the new hynm on the blade-
board and paying not the least attention to anything
else. The new hymn absorbed them.

I seldom found it necessary to play the tune over
more than once ; once they had heard it they sang
it with a swing, imless it were a melody more dull
and difficult than those to which most modem
hjrmns are set.

There was a catastrc^he at one of our nine o'clock

meetings, in which one of our little benches played

the leading part. When four good solid Eskimos

were seated on each of them, the benches were

well laden, and I used to feel some apprehension as

I watched the people edging closer and closer

27S

5 CROWD AND THE SINGING

together to make room for ** just one more/' I felt
sure that the last straw would be reached some day,
but the people always said *^ Namatuinarput " (they
are quite all right) when I expressed my fears. But
the last straw came — and a very substantial last straw
it was — in the person of big Tabea. She came in
rather late one morning and stood looking round
for a place with all the dignity and consequence
of the prosperous middle-aged Eskimo matron.
There were no empty seats, but a comfortable-
looking party of village worthies made room — or
an apology for room — for her in the middle of
their well-filled bench. Tabea sat down ponderously
and with deliberation ; there was an ominous creak-
ing and the bench collapsed with a clatter, heaping
its occupants into a wild scrimmage on the floor.
I could hardly keep my face straight when I saw
them shove the broken bench aside and compose
themselves upon the floor as gravely as you please.

If all this had happened out of doors they would
have laughed, I have no doubt, but this was meeting-
time, when folks do not laugh ; and it speaks well for
the gravity of the Eskimo character that the ludicrous
spectacle of the collapsing bench and the struggling
dignitaries on the floor did not even cause a titter.

Peter and David stayed behind after prayers, and
sawed the unfortunate bench into strips, which they
used to strengthen others that were beginning to
look rather shaky about the legs ; and I took the
precaution of announcing a limit to the seating
capacity of the benches for the future.

278 s

CHAPTER XXII

Bbds for thk Hospital — Eskimo Patisnts — ^Fbkdino

THi Sick Folks

THE summer of 1004 saw the hospital finally
launched in full going order, for among^ the
many things that the Harmony brought ^wo^ the
bedsteads and bedding for the wards. I dare say the
sight of so many long packing-cases awoke some
speculation in the minds of the people, and perhaps
our servant girl only voiced what was in the minds
of many when she asked what they were.

She was a bright and active Eskimo girl of eighteoiy
rejoicing in the picturesque name of Veronica, and
she touched my arm as the boxes came lumberings up
the steps, and said '* Hai, sunat ukkoa ? "

"What are they, Veronica? why, these are the
bedsteads."

'< Bedsteads ? '' — ^this with a puzzled air.

" Ahaila, beds for the sick people."

"Sdgle (but why)? — ^there are no sick people:
old Emilia is the oidy person in bed, and she is not
sick, only old."

I tried to explain to her that these bedsteads
were to be put into the wards in readiness for any
possible sick persons during the future.

''Ai, ai," she said, "are there going to be sick
people? WhowiUitbe?"

I could not help feeling amused at the simplicity
of her reasoning, it was so thoroughly Eskimo ; but

5r74

BEDS FOR THE HOSPITAL

I felt sure in my own mind that it was only
Veronica's first thought, and that after a little
deliberation and a few discussions in the houses she
and all the rest of the people would see the sense in
these beds.

I laughed at Veronica, and told her *^ Tukkisilftr-
potit " (you will understand), and with that she was
content and went singing back to her work.

I sometimes wondered, as I worked with Peter
and David at the laying of linoleum on the ward
floors, and the fitting up of these bedsteads, how
the Eskimos would take to the novelty of hospital
treatment and hospital discipline.

It seemed rather a puzzle, for the more I saw of
the Eskimos the more I knew them to be sticklers
for their own customs and ways; and the more I
talked to them the oftener I heard one or the other
say, ^'We are different from the Kablun&ks
(Europeans)."

Before many days were past men were coming to
say <' So-and-so is ill: may we bring him to
hospital?" and when, a few months later, the sea
was frozen and travelling was possible from station
to station over the ice, sledges began to come from
Hebron and Nain, and even further, bringing sick
and injured folks to occupy those beds.

The fortitude that some of these long-distance

travellers displayed was simply marvellous. Young

Jerry, at Hebron, when he stumbled among the dogs

and got his leg smashed by the oncoming sledge,

elected to ride the sixty rough miles to Okak

stretched upon the hard floor of a travelling sledge.

The lad was evidently profiting by his father's

example, for he told me how, some time previously,

875

ESKIMO PATIENTS

the old man had broken his leg in much the same
way, and the neighbours had treated it in the real old
Eskimo style They propped the man on a rough
wooden bedstead, and buried the broken limb UDdet
a pile of sods 1

I gathered that the victim of this primitive method
of setting a limb was very impatient : however that
may be, the treatment was a fieulure, for the bone
set crooked and the old man goes with a limp. So
young JeAy came to hospital. His drivers, two
fine young fellows, brought him along at a splendid
pace.

There is no one more unselfish than an Eskimo
bent on an errand of mercy. The dogs had enough
to do to pull Jerry, so the drivers walked or ran to
lighten the load and make the pace the feister.
They only rode down the hill £rom Ittipleisoak
(The Big Neck), where the track crosses the ridge
that leads out to Cape Mugford, and on some smooth
stretches on the ice towards Okak where the seal-
fetchers had worn a glassy path: for the most of
the way they trotted, with that high-stepping action
of their short leg& that is so characteristic of the
Eskimos — and which, I verily believe, would bring
them in ahead of the field in a Marathon race.
When the sledge turned into our bay the people
shouted *'Amak" (a woman), because there was a
padded figure sitting on the sledge, with the two
men running beside. None but a woman— <nr a
Kablun&k — ^would sit on the sledge so padded, and
the dogs were the people's dogs. But when the
party came a little nearer their delight at the pros-
pect of a visit from a Hebron fftmily turned to

alarm. '* Amaulungitok " (it is not a woman), they

276

ESKIMO PATIENTS

said. *<Ai-ai, kappd, it is a man: he sits still: he
must be kamiimajok " (a sick one).

Off they ran to help the sledge over the
hunmioeks, and to make things as easy as possible
for the poor fellow who sat there, anxious and weary »
wedged tightly between two planks lashed on the
sledge. This was in January, the coldest part of
the winter.

As I helped the people to carry the sledge bodily
into the hospital I asked young Jerry, *' Are you very
cold?"

** No," said he, simply. ** I am wrapped in a
reindeer skin — but the jolting, ai-ai, it has hurt my

leg."

Another that I shall not easily forget was a man
from Nain, who had even a worse experience than
young Jerry. He made the journey of ninety miles
without a stop, suffering incessant agony from a
huge abscess, grey with pain, but urging his drivers
on and cm. He set out on a fine morhing, but the
second day was stormy, no day for travelling at all.
The poor fellow could not bear to wait. *^ On, on,"
he said, and the drivers, plucky feUows, never
stopped to camp, but plodded on through the night
and all through the blustering snowstorm of the
second day. It means something to trudge ninety
miles without a rest, and with never a warm bite or
sup — ^no food, in fact, but dried fish and frozen
seal meat. Late at night they reached Okak, when
all the village was in bed and no one had any
thought of travellers; and I opened the door to
their knocking, and saw the two travel-worn, snow-
powdered figures bearing the sick man between

them.

«77

ESKIMO PATIENTS

Another face that pushes its way to the firont
of my memory is that of little Kettma, a brisk little
housewife from Nain, who came as a passenger on
her husband's sledge to have treatment for her eye&
There she sat in her bed in the ward, with both eyes
bandaged over; singing in her dear, sweet voice,
and improvising an accompaniment on the guitar.
As we went about our work we could hear the
twankle-twankle of the strings and the quaint sound
of her singing, hour after hour, tune after tune, as the
happy little woman made light of her passing darkness.

When people like these travellers from distant
stations began to come into the hospital, we cast
about in our minds for some way of making them
fed at home. It would never do to pen them up
in a European house, with hardly an Eskimo face
to see: such treatment would soon have depressed
them. No, they must have Eskimo company ; and
so one of the first questions we asked them was,
*' Have you any relatives here ? '' because the Eskimos
are very keen on recognising even the most distant
relationships, and would pay a great deal of attention
to a fourth or fifth cousin from a hundred miles
away. I call to mind one man who gave a strik-
ingly naive answer to the usual question. He was
a cripple from the north, who came on a dog-sledge,
and answered ** Oh, yes " when I asked him whether
he had any relatives in Okak. '' Illale " (certainly),
he said, ^Hhere is so-and-so, and so-and-so — ** and
he reeled off a string of names, most of them quite
unfamiliar to us. '* Ahaila " (yes), I said, ** naukut
inniksakark&t " (where have they their dwelling) ?

<' lUuvervingme " (in the graveyard), said the

cripple.

S78

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

One of the greatest problems that presented
itself m those early days of Okak Hospital was the
^ problem of food.

So often the people had said ^' We are Eskimos —
. we are different from Europeans/' that I felt certain
, that there was a great truth in it. The missionaries
have done the people a good service in persuading
them to remain Eskimos in their food and clothing :
there has been no attempt to force European ways
upon them ; and I am convinced of the wisdom of
this attitude because I have seen how the natives
degenerate when they take to European food. They
lose their natural coating of fat to a great extent,
and need more clothing to withstand the cold ; they
become less robust, less able to endure fatigue, and
their children are puny.

Perhaps it is their great tendency to imitate that
explains why, at the more southern of the stations,
where English-speaking settlers live among the
people at their vUlages, the Eskimos are not so fine
physically as those hving in the north. Whatever
the reason, the fact remains: and so I tackled the
feeding problem. When a sick man came to hospital
I told his friends '' You may bring Eskimo foods for
him," and they hailed the suggestion with delight.
I found them a little shy, at first, of letting me know
what Eskimo foods really were. I knew from hearsay
that seal meat and codfish are the staple things ; and
for a whUe the sick folks were supplied with those :
but presently friends began quietly to bring other
things — ^Eskimo dainties, I might call them.

I went into a ward one day, and found a woman

sitting up in bed sucking and chewing at a pile of

raw fish-heads — ^which she hastily set aside when she

879

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

saw me. Presently she took them up again* and
fell to with the remark, uttered with a shy smile,
** Mammadlarput ukkoa (these taste very good)."

Another had a lot of what looked like dried dates,
threaded on a string. This curious collection looked
very like a necklace, and she kept it by her bedside,
and picked one of the objects off to chew whenever
the fimcy seized her. They puzzled me for a time,
until Juliana (who had made my skin clothes, and
had now become our first Eskimo nurse) enlightmed
me. '* These are trout-stomachs, dried in the op^i
air *'— a real Eskimo tit-bit.

I might make a long list of the foods the people
brought — seal meat raw, dried, boiled, fried, and even
made into a stew with flour and giving forth a most
appetising smell ; the flesh of reindeer, foxes, bears,
hues, sea-birds of all sorts ; eggs of gulls, sea-pigeons
and ptarmigan, the gull's eggs especially being some-
times in a half-hatched state, with great, awfiil-
looking eyes inside them ; trout and cod and salmon ;
the boiled skin of the white whale and the walrus ;
raw reindeer lips and ears — ^these are only some of
the peculiarly Eskimo dishes that passed before our
eyes; to say nothing of att^npts at European
cookery, such as home-baked bread, sometimes grey
and sodden, sometimes light and wholesome, so that
we wondered how Eskimo hands and Eskimo stoves
could bake so well ; roasted dough, as hard as bricks,
a concoction of flour and water baked on the top of
a tiny iron stove ; and even, on festal occasions, dough
with currants.

The list might be longer: as a matter of fact,

about the only food the people did not bring to

hospital was their great delicacy — rotten seal-flippas I

980

FEEDING THE SICK POLKS

I made the acquaintance of this remarkable item on
the Eskimo menu when I was visiting in one of the
houses on the hill. The people were grouped round
a wooden tub which contained a pile of grey and
slimy somethings ; the smell that arose from the tub
was subtle and evil.

« What have you got ? '' I asked them ; and the
head man of the household answered with the
Eskimo word for " rotten/'

He held a flipper up for me to see, and shook his
head with a smile as he said ^' You could not eat that ;
it would make you ill/'

** Ahaila," said another man in the circle, ** only
strong people can eat rotten flippers. No good for
sick people. Illdle, but we like them, and they do
us good, but the people in the south have forgotten
how to eat rotten flippers, and their stomachs have
grown too weak. Mammadlarpulle (but they taste
good)." How long those flif^rs had been soaking
in that tub I did not find out, but they were assuredly
gamey.

And the man spoke a truth; the northern
Eskimos are far more primitive in their food than
are the southerners; and yet, all along the coast,
they still keep to the staple diet of raw meat that
earned for them in olden times the epithet ^* Eskimo
—eater of raw flesh " which, as the story goes, the
Indians hurled at them in derision. And without a
doubt the raw foods suit their peculiar constitution
the best.

I found that the people refuse food so long as

they feel acutely ill : their one cry is <^ Immilanga,

immilanga (water, water)." As a consequence they

waste away at an extraordinary rate; and after a

281

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

few days of serious illness the qu<mdam plump and
ruddy Eskimo is gaunt and haggard, with bony face
and wrinkled skin ; he seems to have grown old all
of a sudden. But with the beginning of con-
valescence the feeding begins. So soon as the
invalid loses his pains and his feeling of misery his
appetite returns, and he devours immcjise quantities
of meat and fish, washing them down with copious
draughts of water. This &ttening process is even
more wonderful to watch than the wasting: the
hollow cheeks fill out, wrinkles disappear, limbs grow
round and plump again, and the face locks younger
day by day. All sorts of food are welcome, but
without a doubt the native foods are the foods that
work the miracle. I have seen the people sitting up
in bed, munching strip after strip of tough dried
codfish and leathery nipko (dried reindeer meat), and
dipping the strips between the bites into a cup of
cod-liver oil kept handy for the purpose. I suppose
the oil moistened the meat ; at any rate it gave it a
proper Eskimo flavour — ^but it must be proper
Eskimo oil. I thought to save trouble by getting a
gallon of the real thing from the oil yard ; but no,
the sick folks wanted it fresh and home made, and I
besought their friends to bring them some. It came,
the crude article, brown and nauseous, the result of
frying Uvers over the stove in the famUy frying-pan ;
and it was like honey to their palate. They dipped
and chewed, and sucked and chewed and dipped
again, and said <*Piovok'' (it is good), <*Anan&k"
(splendid). And I wondered, as I watched them
eat, whether it was that same all-useful frying-pan
that gave the subtle and indescribable flavour to all
home-made Eskimo foods, a flavour that the people

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

seemed to miss in the native cookery done in our
hospital kitchen I

But, aftar all, the raw foods suit them best, and
they know it. I went into one of the huts during
my first week in Okak, to see a young woman who
was just recovering from a serious illness. The spec-
tacle that greeted me when I opened the door was
enough to alarm the bravest: there sat the woman
on her bed, a gaunt and white-faced spectre, with
her breast bare, and blood dripping from her mouth.
I thought some dire catastrophe had happened.
** Whatever is the matter ? " I said. For a moment
she was silent: she was shy: then she said <'My
husband has brought me home akkigivik (a par-
tridge)," and she lifted her hands to her mouth again,
and tore with gusto at the raw, warm flesh of the bird.

When once their shyness was overcome there was
no difficulty about feeding; some native food or
other was dways in season, and people were always
willing to bring a share of what they had.

There was genuine sacrifice— sacrifice, I mean,

with the right motive behind it — in those gifts of

meat Men used to come with dishes and pots,

containing lumps of raw flesh or samples of native

cookery, and hand them over with a shy smile and a

laconic ''for the sick folks." And, incidentally, it

was over a matter of food that my friend Paulus

showed me that the people had reaUy grasped the

meaning of those bedsteads that had puzzled Veronica.

He came one day dangling a leg of reindeer

meat, and handed it to me with a little speech. ** I

know,'' he said, ''that nipko is very good for the

sick folks. They like it, and it gives them nukke

(sinews). Take this meat, and have it made into

Ji88

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

nipko. No, I wiD not take it home, because if I do
the meat will be eaten up. Keep it here, and have
it dried; then you will have some good nipko for
next winter, to give to the sick people if there are

nations in their disr^^ard of vegetable foods? I

sometimes saw them getting young willow shoots

and one or two other little bits of green, and eatuig

them as a reli^ to their meat; but they make

absolutely no attempt to till what soil there is, and

they do not even mike the most of the plants that

grow. During the short weeks of summer the

vegetation springs up in a perfectly marvellous

manner, I was astonished at the profosion and

variety of the wild plants and flowers that cover the

hillsides. Surely among this wild scramble of plant

life there must be some things that are good to eat !

I know that there are plenty of dandelion leaves,

and I have tasted worse things in my time, but the

people never touch them. It was a marvel to me

how the Eskimos managed to keep free from scurvy,

eating so little green food ; but the settlers on the

coast say that seal meat does instead of vegetables,

presumably because there are similar salts in it, and

so eaters o( seal meat are able to keep healthy. It

is very likely true, for the Eskimos, whose main

food it is, are practically free frt>m scurvy. We

Europeans could never take to seal meat ; it looks

very black and nasty, and has a queer, inky, fishy

taste that goes against a fastidious palate; but the

people only smile at our lack of appreciation of their

greatest delicacy, and teU us ^ Mamadlarpok " (it

tastes fine).

284

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

I found plenty of mushrooms on the hillsides on
the warm days of August, but the Eskimos would
have none of them : in fact, they were hardly to be
persuaded to gather them. To their minds there is
something uncanny about mushrooms. *^ Aha/' they
used to say, '^ the food of the Evil One — ^piungitut
(bad)."

But though gardening is entirely foreign to the
Eskimo nature, they do not entirely scorn the good
things of the earth.

The berries are a great boon, so much that after
the failure of the berry crop in 1904 — because a
plague of mice had eaten the young shoots in the
springtime — there was an epidemic of ill -health
among the people. In most years the scrubby
bushes that crawl upon the ground are loaded with
succulent berries — a truly marvellous provision — and
the people gather them not only by handfuls and
bucketfuls, but by barrelfuls. In October, when
the ground was idready becoming powdered with
snow and frost, and there was ice upon the pools
among the moss and on the stones that strew the
beach, I have seen the Eskimo women putting their
barrels on tall rocks, with heavy stones upon the lid,
or slinging them over branches of trees, and I have
asked them ^ Why ? "

"Soon freeze," they answer, "high up— not get
covered with snow — good all the winter"; and I
saw that there is a certain amount of provident
laying up for the future in the Eskimo life.

I was glad to see it, for I had thought at first

that these hunters, who go out after the seals, and feast

high while there is plenty, would have no other idea

than to live literally from hand to mouth. But I

885

FEEDING THE SICE FOLKS

see that where Nature has taught them the need,
they lay up store. They dry reindeer meat after
Easter» and keep it for the weeks when the ice is
cracking and seals are hard to find ; they dry codfish
in the smnmer, simply hanyng it in the open air
unsalted, and use it for food between the going of
the codfish and the coming of the seals in autumn ;
th^ store up the berries for the winter. TVith
these exceptions, which are long-established customs,
the Eskimos are not a thrifty folk. Even the
promise of a ten per cent, interest on their savings
does not make these hunters see the value of a bank
balance: they like to handle the worth of their
earnings at once, and in solid substance.

986

CHAPTER XXIII

LizETTA — ^' Broken ** — ^Natiyb Doctors — Superstitions

MY stoiy of the starting of the hospital would
be sadly incomplete if I did not bring in the
name of Lizetta.

She is a bright, brisk little Eskimo mother, who
gives one about as good an idea of an Eskimo house-
wife as can be got.

She spends the day in working at the seals that

her husband brings home, and in making boots and

clothing from the skins; and she has to be pretty

busy if she is to keep the hard-working husband and

the active little brood of chubby toddlers properly

clad. Scraping skins, cutting out, chewing leather

to soften it, stitching and mending — these are her

household duties ; and besides them there are only the

floor-scrubbing, and the wood-chopping for the stove,

to make any real demand on her time. She wastes

no time over cooking — ^food tastes ever so much

better raw, she says: she is not hampered in the

morning by having the beds to make — they need no

making ; just roll up the reindeer skin and spread

the coloured counterpane, and there you are I

Like other Eskimo mothers, she leaves the children

a great deal to themselves, and trusts them to

grow up strong and hardy. But unfortunately,

though in the way of caring for them she does what

other Eskimo mothers do, keeping them well-fed and

well-clothed, the little folks in Lizetta's house are

S87

LIZETTA

puny, and so it came about that Lizetta was cme of
the hospital's most frequent visitors. Bright little
soul, in spite of her troubles she was always cheery,
and used to keep the people in the waiting-room in a
continual state of merriment with her odd quips and
her lively descriptions of anything that was happen-
ing. She and her little troop were blessed with an
extra share of good lodes, and made up in spirit for
what they lacked in bodily vigour ; in fact, a jollier
family you could hardly imagine, and it is no wonder
that we were all fond of them« This little mother
came running one day to pant out the startling news
that little Gustaf had ** ffdlen and broken his back.''
I ran with all haste to the hut, with my mind full of
dismal visions of the brightest of our little school-
boys moaning on a hard bed of reindeer skins, help-
less and crippled But no, little Gustaf was sitti^
on the doorstep, apparently as lively as a cricket
He had fidlen and bruised his back; the pain had
made him cry ; and his mother had used the correct
word under tke circumstances to convey the informa-
tion that his back was painfuL ** Broken " seemed a
strong expressicm: it was the same word that she
would have used in talking of a box smashed up for
firewood; and I thought it was the cry of " Wolf"
when there was no w(d£ One leams to understand
these things ; it was no wilful exaggeration, but just
an example of the Eskimo way of expressing things.
If an Eskimo has pain in any part of his body,
that part is, to his way of thinking, broken. And
similarly, if a man has a bad cough, his lungs are
broken, and so on. The woman who came from the
frozen snow-huts at Killinek to live in her brother's

wooden house at Okak, and who found the warmth

S88

« BROKEN

more than she could endure, used just the same
expression when she said <' My life is broken." This
is the idea upon which the native doctors work :
something is broken, and must be mended.

In every village there are several of these
** doctors/' men and women who by some means or
other have gained a reputation for unusual skill in
dealing with sickness. Of medicines they hav^ very
few. They stew the twigs diS the rosemary, and
make a sort of tea : this is their panacea, and as it
causes sweating perhaps it has its value. The brain
of the codfish is another of their native medicines ;
and they have a great fondness for giving the raw
liver of the seal to sick people. Many a time have I
found them munching the little red cubes into which
they like it chopped.

I found this little habit out because I used to
wonder why seal's liver was so difficult to get from the
people. It was the only part of the fishy •flavoured
seal that we could eat with any degree of enjoyment,
and during the winter it was often the only form of
fresh meat-food that we could obtain ; but in spite of
the good price that we offered only a very few livers
came our way.

Juliana, our first Eskimo hospital nurse, explained
the mystery in a few words: "Tingo (liver) very
good for sick people."

The fact is that the people set great store by it as
a health-giving food, and there are generally feeble
and ailing ones wanting all the liver they can get :
also, by the way, it is a great tit-bit, so that we con-
sidered ourselves rather fortunate to get any at all.

The native " doctor " sets very Kttle store by his

medicines; there is '< mending" to be done, and

289 T

NATIVE DOCTORS

accordingly he carries out his treatment by means of
lengthy and mysterious manipulations. The Eskimos
have a general idea of the constitution of the body ;
their constant work upon the seals gives them that ;
they know whereabouts the various organs are, but
of the marvellous way in which those organs work
together in the bodily economy they have no idea.
The wonders of physiology are beyond the grasp of
their child minds ; they do not puzzle their heads
over what they do not understand: *^ Taimaipok "
(it is so), they say, and are content.

The native rubbers are rather shy of letting
Europeans see them at their work, but this is m^ely
the natural shyness of letting others see them at their
peculiarly Eskimo habits. I have been a privileged,
and sometimes unexpected, spectator a time or two,
and found the manipulator surrounded by a crowd of
men, all eager to see '^ how it is done."

There was a very famous rubber in Okak during
my time, a weird old fellow, respectable and hard-
working enough, rather primitive in his habits, but
possessed of a deformity of the roof of his mouth
which gave his speech an almost un-understandable
twang.

I dare say his peculiarity was something of an

asset, for he got frequent employment as a '' mender ''

of ^'broken" backs and lame joints. There is no

doubt that the nibbing was good for many things,

but I think that the native doctors owe some of their

popularity to the old Eskimo conservatism. I have

known people come to hospital with such a tale as

this: *^I broke my back yesterday at my work.

Old Jakko mended it last night, but it is no better I *'

The work of the native doctors is an innocent

890

NATIVE DOCTORS

sort of thing ; they profess no witchcraft or sorcery
or magic ; all that sort of thing has passed away as
the other relics of heathenism pass, and whether it be
in sickness or in health, the Eskimos are a Christian
people.

The idea that parts of the body are broken, as an
explanation of various pains, led to some curious
experiences.

The Eskimos did not understand that one disease
could produce aches and pains in different parts
of the body; and it was quite a common ex-
perience for persons suffering from influenza — that
bane of Labrador — to come and say, *^ My head is
broken, and my back, and my bones, and my lungs ;
I am always coughing, and my throat, how it hurts,"
and then to ask for head-medicine and back-medicine
and bcme-medicine and cough-medicine and throat-
medicine, ticking the items off oo their fingers in
business-like style.

Usually they asked for ** siumik " (medicine), their
favourite way of putting it ; but when they had a
string of medicines to recite it was generally *' illinga-
jomik " that they wanted — ^that which belongs to this,
that, or the other pain. It was necessary to explain
that the bottle contained something good for (or
belonging to) all these pains; and then the person
would look at the bottle, and eye me, and nod, and
say '' Ha," and walk off with a puzzled sort of air, as
if he wondered how the different medicines in the
bottle would know where to go after they were
swallowed I

It was quite in keeping with their childlike ideas,
and their lack of appreciation of the marvellous com-
plexity of the human body, that they should, some

291

NATIVE DOCTORS

of them, think that a medicine good for one thing
must be equally good for another. A man came in
one day, and asked for some of '^ the red-coloured
medicine."

I asked him, *' What is the matter with you ? "

He simply said, ** Kujanna (never mind), I want
some of the red medicine."

'^ No," I said, ^* not unless I am sure that it is the
sort you need : tell me what ails you."

** I have sprained my shoulder," he said.

^'Then the red medicine that you are fa^llr ing
about will not be of any use to you: it is not
illingajomik for sprained shoulders."

** Atsuk," he went on, ^' my mate outside says that
he thinks that red medicine must be the quickest
kind, for it mended his pain. Give me the r^ sort."

Our old friend Maria voiced another side of
the native simplicity when she came shuffling in
one day, bursting with the dignity of her new
position. Poor old soul, she had been married only
a few days before to a worthy old fellow who was
coming to the end of his days, and who had long
been casting about for a wife to share his solitude.
Maria was concerned for the old man. ''I want
knee-medicine," she said, '^knee-medicine for the
old man."

Visions of the poor old feUow tumbling over
the stones outside his door and hurting his knees
came into my mind.

** How did he hurt his knees ? " I asked her.

** He has not hurt his knees at alL"

More visions, this time of a poor old man

crippled with rheumatism.

*^ Is the medicine for the pains in his knees ? "

i&st

NATIVE DOCTORS

'* No, he has no pains in his knees."

Now all this, long-winded though it may sound,
is a perfectly characteristic interview; it gives a
thoroughly true picture of the deliberation of an
Eskimo statement*

^'For what purpose does the old man want
knee-medicine."

*^ Issumamnik " (my own idea), she said, " the
poor old man has such feeble knees; they totter
and shake when he gets out of bed in the morning,
and when he gets up to walk about. I want some
good knee-medicine to cure that."

Pathos and humour tumble over one another's
heels when one comes to deal with Eskimo requests,
and of course a good deal of the humour depended
on one's early struggles with the language.

When I handed a person two pills, and tried
to say ''Take one pill to^ay, and the other to-
morrow,*' it struck me as very ludicrous to find,
after a hot chase through the pages of the grammar
book, that the proper way to put it was ''Take
that pill to-day, and its wife to-morrow." While
I was up in the attic with the two carpenters, I
was startled to hear shrieks of immoderate laughter
pealing from downstairs. Presently our English
hospital nurse, a beginner at the language, came
up and said, "Sarah wants to see you, but when
I tell her to come up here she only laughs."

When I got down to the porch Sarah went
off into more fits of laughter. " Ai-ai, uttilerk^t ? "
(have you come back), she said. " Una " (that one)
pointing to the nurse — " told me that you had gone
to heaven, and I might go there if I wanted to
speak to you." It was just an error of pronunciation.

SUPERSTITIONS

*< kiUangme " (in heaven) instead of *' koUane " (in the
attic) ; but for weeks and weeks Sarah chewed that
joke» and used to burst out laughing as soon as
she saw me.

Work among the Eskimos was, to me, a very
fascinating tiling. It is not all easy — nay, it can
be trying and discouraging often enough. There
is the touch of fatalism to combat ; it is deep-rooted
in the Eskimo nature. When disaster overtakes
a man, he simply says *^ Ajomarmat '' (it cannot be
helped); and he generally says it without any re-
sentment. But sanitary reforms caused a raising
of eyebrows. *^ No," said the people, '* that is not
the way we do: our fathers never did that: it is
not a custom of the people.''

Impatience is another hindrance. The people
willingly take to reforms of which they can see the
immediate benefit; but a teacher must be voy
patient and unwearjringly persistent if he wishes
them to adopt habits of which tiie benefit is mott
remote. Impatience and fatalism go hand in hand :
the Eskimos will stick to their own old ways unless
they can be made to see that other ways are
better ; and unless the innovations are plainly better
— ^to Eskimo eyes — ^they take to them ¥rithout
enthusiasm.

I got many a glimpse of native impatience in
the hospital out-patients' room ; even the medicines,
they thought, must work quickly.

The young fellow with the paralysed leg, who

came to have the electric battery applied, got tired

of it after a few. mornings, and stayed away. When

we had him fetched he said, ** Tukkekang^lak (there

is no sense in it) ; I have had it several times, and

294

SUPERSTITIONS

my leg is still lame. Why cannot it cure me at
once ? " But I found the Eskimos open to reason ;
they would listen gravely and seriously to little
lectures on elementary anatomy ; under proper super-
vision they were persuaded to try long courses of
treatment in the hope of eventual cure — though
I expect that when they got away to their summer
tents or their sealing quarters they forgot again.

There are not many traces of superstition stiU
lingering; but in my goings in and out I found a
few. I remember how frightened one young man
became because he had caught a fox with a peculiar
mark upon it : ''I shall die soon/' he said.

There are a few little beliefs connected with occur-
rences in the hunt, but they are not often mentioned
in these days ; the fears and fSancies of heathen times
have passed away.

But I found the people afraid of the presence of
death: not of death itself — that they meet with
equanimity; but they are timid to be left with a
dying person, and for this reason, if for no other, a
deathbed is always surrounded by a crowd of friends.
They have the curious custom of pulling down a
bedstead on which a person has died, and building it
up in another part of the house ; and they sometimes
go to the extreme of dismantling the whole hut, and
building it again on another site. There seems to be
nothing but superstition to account for these customs,
for I have seen a man pull his hut down and build it
up from the same material elsewhere, while somebody
else put up a new hut on the discarded site. Super-
stition it seems to be, and as such it clings to the
Eskimo nature ; but I could not help thinking that,

after all, it has a certain sanitary value. '^ Under

295

SUPERSTITIONS

the bed *' is a great place for poking all the useless
lumber of an Eskimo household, and the shifting
of a bed into another comer effectively clears the
somewhat unsavoury accumulation.

''Just big children" said my firiend the mis-
sionary; and these fears and superstitions are just
signs of the child mind. If you go through a village
in the night, you will see a tiny light glimmering in
many of the houses. The people are fast asleep, but
they like to keep a light burning ; like children, they
are timid in the darkness. But in many a household
the fear has passed away. When night has fallen,
and the evening prayers have been said, the Eskimo
housewife puts out tiie lamp and the family settles to
sleep in peace.

S96

CHAPTER XXIV

Eskimo Cousins— VisiriNo — Out with the Motor Boat

I HAD a rather amusing adventure with the ever-
cheerful Lizetta during my first winter at Okak.
There was an epidemic of infectious disease arising in
one or two of the huts, and I knew enough of the
companionable nature of the Eskimos to fear that
the sickness might spread from house to house by
reason of much visiting ; so I posted a notice on the
hospital door to say that there must be no visiting of
the people sick with this disease. ** PuUarviksakar-
ungnaipok t&pkonunga *' — ^read the notice.

This new departure met with a mixed reception.

Partly it was hostile. ^^ That is silly ; there is no
sense in it, We Eskimos always visit wherever we
like ; it is the custom of the people."

Partly it was fatalistic, with that misunderstanding
sort of fatalism that one might expect from the
wilder spirits among the people. ** If God's will is so,
the siclmess wiU spread in spite of anything that you
can do : and if God's vriU is that we should not be
sick, why may we not visit ? " ** Ah," I told them,
'' God is teaching men nowadays to take good care :
He expects us all to obey the laws of health. Cer-
tainly He gives us our food, every one of us, but He
gives us strength to earn our food, and hands to put
it into our mouths.''

And partly it was met by a thoughtful request.

The solemn elders of the village came as a deputation.

897

ESKIMO COUSINS

'* We agree,'* they said, '< that the people ought not
to visit those sick with this catching sickness, and
the people wiU obey your words; but what about
relatives? May they not visit their sick ones, the
sick ones of their own family, and brmg them food
and make them happy?" ''It is reasonable," I
answered ; ** an exception shall be made for relatives
who want to care for their sick ones: such people
may visit." The solemn deputation nodded their
heads, .and withdrew to convey the decision to the
village. After that, whatever bedside I visited,
whatever house I entered, there I almost certainly
found Lizetta.

" You ought not to be visiting here," I told her.

'* Oukagle (but no), you are wrong," said Lizetta,
taking up her defence with some warmth, ^* oukagle,
this is my kattangutiarsuk (little cousin)." Upon my
word, the whole village seemed to be Lizetta's cousin 1
** lUale (but certainly) ; her mother married the cousin
of my mother " — that was enough : it meant a proper
kattangutiarsuk.

It was only that the keen-witted little woman had

betiiought herself of her numberless relationships, and

was anxious to help in her own bright way ; for when

I thought the matter over, I could not fiiil to see

that most of the Eskimos must be related in some

way or other. They are only a small nation ; not

many more than a thousand, all told ; and for years

they have gone on, marrying and intermarrying,

until it is hard to find a family that cannot claim

kinship of a sort with the greater part of their

village. The Eskimos have little other prospect

than to go on in the same way, marrjring their own

distant relatives, and I think that this is against their

998

ESKIMO COUSINS

chances of increase ; and so I urged them, through
the pages of their little newspaper (I) to widen their
circle by choosing wives from other villages, instead
of linking the families of each village closer and
closer to each other. This close relationship is one
of their drawbacks ; and yet, with all their obstacles
and all their drawbacks, they remain the masters of
the frightful difficulties that beset their life ; they are
the real hunters of the Labrador.

Their endurance of cold and fatigue is far greater
than their power of withstanding bodily illness.
Accidents they can face ; their powers of repair after
injuries are truly marvellous ; but disease is another
thing. Their resisting power is low, and they are
soon prostrate ; and this, I suppose, is the way with
all the nature peoples. And yet their pluck is very
great. As long as an Eskimo feels really iU, or has
severe bodily pain, he looks, and is, very ill indeed ;
but when the actual feeling of pain or distress is
gone, he thinks that he is well again. It is partly
sheer pluck, partly native impatience. The practical
outcome is that an Eskimo invalid takes less care of
himself than a more civilised person would do. He
takes no notice of the onset of disease, but goes on
with his work untU, from pain or weakness, he can
work no more. And he takes no notice of con-
valescence; he wants to be up and out and at his
hunting before he can properly stand on his feet. I
once went into a hut to see a young man who had in-
flammation of the lungs. He was very ill indeed, and
there was some doubt about his living through it ; his
friends sat watching him -with great anxiety. Next
day I foimd the hut empty 1 "Ah,** thought I, " his
friends have moved him to another house ; " they have

9S9

VISITING

a great trick of doing that ; so I set off to investigate.
But the man was not in the village, and I was puzzled
until a feeble hail from across the water set me on
the right track. There was the sick man, alone in a
little boat, pulling manfully at the oars, and coughing
as he pylled. <<1 am all right now," he shouted,
** yesterday I was very ill ; I had much pain. Now
I am better; I have only got a cough." He had
been to clear his trout net !

There is plenty of incident in a doctor^s daily
round in Labrador, though it be only in the mild
form of peeps at typical Eskimo life, or small ad-
vttitures such as foils down great snow-pits or even
a plunge through the roof of a buried hut or a sudden
and pi^ul descent into a sort of cave full of vicious
sledge«dogs which was the householder's buried snow
porch. But visits are not always tame ; they can be
well spiced with adventure, even on a summer's day.

I remember as if it were yesterday the quaint,

squat figure that came trotting along the beach

round the head of the bay ; before she reached me

she had begun to deliver her message. ^' Come," she

said, ** come, tuavigit (be quick), my sister — ^very ill

— quick." She pointed towards a white dot on the

rocks at the mouth of the bay. ** Tuppivut-una "

(that is our tent), she went on ; *^ umiakark^t ? " (have

you a boat). I had a boat, a rare little tub, but there

was nobody to help with the rowing. *' Un#t," said

Augusta, and in a few minutes she and I were taking

turns at the rowing, for an Eskimo woman is brought

up to take her share of the work in a boat, and

besides, we could not spare the time to trudge those

nine miles ovtt the pebbly beach. The tide was on

the ebb, and we got across in splendid time. Many

800

VISITING

a merry haU did we get from the fishing boats as
they passed us on their way home, for all the village
had been a-fishing. It was a rare reward at tiie end
of that long pull to kneel on the soft moss beside
the rude couch of reindeer skins, and hear the whis-
pered ^^Nakomdk" from poor tired suffering lips:
life is wonderfiilly well worth living at moments
like that.

By the time I was ready to start back the tide
had turned, and with it had come the wind. The
little ripples on the bay were all crested with white,
but it was a home wind and a home tide, and I set
out on my solitary journey without any misgivings.
But half-an-hour later I was wishing I had walked
round. My tub of a boat was bouncing about like a
cork, with great waves chasing after it, and I was
struggling to get the oars into the water and keep in
front of the sea. If I got broadside on I was done
for, for the sea was high enough to swamp the boat
in an instant ; and with the water only two or three
degrees above freezing-point a two miles' swim was
an utter impossibility. So I stuck to the oars till
my fingers were numb, silently praying all the while
for strength to win through. But the biting spray
takes all the nerve out of an Englishman's fingers,
and my grip began to loosen ; and more than once
the boat turned enough to diip a heavy smack from
one of the chasing waves. There was a mighty
bump, and I tumbled backward off my seat. A
rough hand seized my arm as I fell, and I found
myself scrambling into Paulus's boat, with Paulus's
roimd face beaming at me from under a mop of
sodden hair. He had the tiller in an iron grasp, and

with one hand he was hitching the painter of my

801

THE MOTOR BOAT

Kttle bovt to a hook. Happily he was the owner of
a fine hig trap-boat, but he had his anxious mom^its
as he wori^ed her round. There came an almost
imperceptible lull — a rather smaller wave; Faulus
flung his weight on the tiller, and ducked as the
boom banged over — and we were racing homewards,
with the nose of the boat roaring through the water.
We were all right now, and Paulus grinned as he
did his characteristic shake to get the wet hair out of
his eyes. ^ Very nearly bad job," said he ; and that
was the only refference I ever knew Paulus make to
the fiut that he had saved my life.

Haj^y the need for such adventures no longer
exists, since in the summer of 1908 a fine motor boat
came to Okak Hospital as a present firom generous-
hearted Mends. This was a great help: it meant
that the people could easily be visited at their
scattered fishing camps during the busy fishing
season, when ordinarily they are away from the
Mission station for days or weeks at a time ; and so,
not only would they be under better supervision, but
the usefulness of the hospital to them would be
vastly increased. And since the sununer of 1908
the ^diite motor boat. The Northern Star, has
puffed busily to and firo.

I had the pleasure of a trial trip in her before I
left the coast, and, as if to give me a proper apprecia-
tion of the boat's seaworthiness, the elements com-
bined in the worst storm of the season. We made
quite a large party ; myself and wife, my successor
and his wife, the English hospital nurse, Veronica
the kitchen-girl, and Jerry. We took Jeny the
organist because he happened to be at home, and
because he knows every rock within miles of Okak ;

THE MOTOR BOAT

and partly because of his huge delight at meeting a
" pujoUarsuk '* (little steamer) at such close quarters.
'* Tattamnarmdk/' he muttered, as he scrutinised
the engine — which he for want of a better word,
called " erchavingit " (the ship's bowels) — "tattam-
narmdk " (how marvellous).

Jerry was pilot, and, like a true Eskimo, he took
his duties seriously: however much he may have
wanted to see the working of the engine, he said no
more, but climbed out to the bows and pointed out
the way. We ran the ten miles to Uivak, and had a
good look at his black, rocky sides ; and I thought of
the time when I saw him standing in the dark
winter water, and when Johannes led the sledges
over the top : but Jerry tapped me on the shoulder
and said — " We go home now : bad storm very soon."

Round we steered, and nosed into the rising sea.

The boat travelled splendidly, and did good work

agamst the wind ; but soon the waves were crashing

over the roof of the cabin, and Jerry, experienced

man, began to be alarmed. As long as we faced the

sea it was not so bad, but to get to Okak we had to

run five miles broadside on to the storm. We tried

it for a short distance; but, though I believe the

boat might have got through safely, it seemed

useless to risk so valuable a thing — ^to say nothing of

our lives— when an hour or two might bring cabn

weather again. Jerry breathed a fervent ^'NakomSk "

when he saw the boat siving round and head for

shore: he and I were soaked to the skin, and the

water was slopping over our boots as we stood in the

bows, but that was no new thing for him; his

** Nakomdk " was not for a prospect of warm feet and

dry clothes, but for the turning of our backs on the

808

THE MOTOR BOAT

tossing channel that we had tried to cross, and idiose
treacheries he knew so much better than I.

We dropped our anchor in a little rocky bay, out
of the worst of the wind, and set ourselves to wait
But the storm only grew worse ; it swung us round
and round at the end of our chain until Jerry feared
that the anchor would drag. Night fell with the
wind still howling, so we made up our minds to a
night in the boat, and foraged under the seats for
eatables. We found some tins of meat and a bag of
ship's biscuit, rather tough and unpalatable food for
folks who were half seasick; however, we were
thankful not to be starving, so we gnawed our
supper like rats and settled for the night. There
was not much sleep to be had, though we rolled
from side to side, and counted sheep in our minds ;
the ceaseless howling of the wind, and the constant
shocks as the waves battered against our walls,
would have kept most folks awake ; and Jeny, the
only one of us who could, perhaps, have slept
through the din, stood watchful and serious, leaning
against the window of the engine room, with his
eyes upon the anchor chain and the line of white
breakers that marked the shore. Each time I turned
to try a fresh position, there he stood; and in the
grey of the morning, when I woke from a drowse, he
was just as I had seen him last, silent and faithful,
watching and waiting for the wind to drop.

We got ashore during the morning in the little

punt that we had with us, and varied the monotony

by finding some water to drink. Then came faxeak-

fast, a nameless mush of meat and biscuits and

water, mixed in a meat-tin and warmed over a smoky

fire among the stones ; but once again I found that

THE MOTOR BOAT

hunger is the best sauce, and somehow I was not
surprised at the way in which Jerty and Veronica
smacked their lips over it. It was not until late in
the afternoon that Jerry judged it safe to venture on
the sea again, and then we ploughed along the
troughs of huge waves, with the water flopping
limply over us, and so reached Okak.

'' Tikkikise ? " said Jerry's wife, big placid
Sibilla, ** uigamerasugi — ai, ai " (I thought I was a
widow) — ^and then the two of them laughed and
trudged away home together.

Writing about the motor-boat makes me think of
Benjie.

Benjie is a small boy of five or six years, and the
way he comes into the story is this. He was romp-
ing on the jetty with some other boys, when he
tumbled into the seven feet of water that we have
at high tide. The others clambered down and fished
him out, limp and half choked, and brought him to
hospital.

The child was soon fit to be out of doors, and we

sent him home to his grandmother's hut, where he

acted as general servant, wood-chopper, water-fetcher,

fisherman, and what-not in the intervals of his play.

Thereafter he seemed to be always hanging about

the hospital steps, becoming strangely eager and

restive at the least sign of our going out of doors :

this turned out to be his odd way of showing his

appreciation of the comforts of hospital — he had

elected himself chief general helper on the motor

boat 1 It was useless to talk to the boy ; he was as

deaf as a board ; but he used to wait out there with

dog-like devotion for some sign. A thumb jerked

over one's shoulder meant oars to Benjie, and away

805 u

THE MOTOR BOAT

he would trot to fetch them, and then over the beach
to haul the little punt inshore; and by the time I
got to the water's edge he was in his place with the
two oars in his baby hands, and a smile of utter con-
tent on his fat, round face. Sometimes, when there
was a breeze blowing, it seemed a shame to let the
little fellow row; but once when I took the oars
away, he cried so piteously that I had no choice but
to sit in idleness in the stem and watch the lusty
little arms tug away.

He always *' helped " to get the anchor up, and
then wanted to take his turn at the wheel; but I
deprived him of this last honour after he had grazed
the side of the buoy that marks our Okak reef, and
had given me my one and only view of the jagged
rocks within a few feet of our planks.

Faithful little Benjie 1 His stolid face and gleam-
ing eyes come to my mind every time I think of the
Okak motor-boat, and so I have given him a place in
my chronicle of the starting of a Mission hospital
among the Eskimo hunters of Labrador.

806

CHAPTER XXV

Eskimo Housed— Making Windows— -Stubborn Lsarnkrs — A
Scrubbing-brush Episode — My Harmonium — ^A Concert

DURING my years in Labrador I saw very
little of the old snow-house dwellings. They
have vanished, except in the neighbourhood of Killi-
nek and some other parts of the north, and all that I
saw of them was on my sledge journeys. But snow
houses on sledge journeys are but poor imitations of
the real thini;, with its ice-window and its carefully
joinW protfoting waU «d porch, »d «peeUUy i^
luxurious size. Sledge drivers always misjudged my
length, at least until they got used to me. They
persisted in building snow houses to fit Eskimos, and
I had usually several inches of spare 1^ to tuck away
into some cramped and awkward position. Julius
and Johannes got to know my measure, so to say,
and used to build me a house in which I could at
least stretch comfortably if I lay across the middle ;
but, as I was about to say, in spite of their popularity
as shelters on journeys^ snow houses as permanent
winter dwellings are getting very scarce.

At all the older villages the people have huts of
wood or turf. I feel something like a war-horse with
the scent of battle in its nostrils when I think of
those old turf huts — ^iglos, the Eskimos call them.
What unsavoury dens they were 1 How I thirsted
to abolish them 1 Description is a poor thing when

an Eskimo iglo is the sul^ect ; but try to imagine a

807

ESKIMO HOUSES

thing that looks like a heap of turf or sods, with a
battered tin pipe sticking out of the top, and a long,
low tunnel leading up to one side, and you have a
fairly good mental picture of the outside of an iglo.
Inside there is a lining of smoke-blackened boughs
and trunks of little trees, all shiny with grease ; a
small allowance of light filters dimly in tlurou^^ a
membrane of scales bowel stretched across a hole in
the roof, and the door, hanging limp upon its seal-
hide hinges, permits the only suggestion of air to
waft sluggishly along the tunnel porch. But the
smell I There is nothing like it : it is the rancid,
fishy smell of stale seal*oiL It smites your nostrils
when you go in, and the heat from the little iron
stove combines with the smell to make the statfy
atmosphere almost unbearable. Can the Eskimos be
healthy in homes like that ? Is it any wonder that
I pine to see such dens abolished ?

But the Eskimos are progressing ; iglos are get-
ting few and far between, and little wooden huts are
cropping up like mushrooms. Long efforts have at
last aroused ambition in the Eskimo mind. Your
modem hunter wants a wooden house : it only costs
a little trouble, and he knows that it is worth it.
Some fine spring morning he calls his dogs together,
and hies him to the woods. He builds a tiny snow
hut for shelter, and lives on tough dried meat. He
is after timber for a house, and from dawn to dusk
he searches for the best of the poor stunted trees and
chops them down. Then he builds a sort of scaffold^
and gets his wife to hdp him saw the planks. Many
a time have I seen them at work with their big pit-
saws : the man is top sawyer on the scaffold, while the

woman stands below and does her share, and so they

808

g 1l
« IS

a 1-3

ESKIMO HOUSES

get planks for their home* Buildmg begins later on,
for the seal-hunting and the cod-fishing are too
important to be missed ; but, sooner or later, before
the next winter b due the Eskimo gets busy* He
lays a foundation of stones from the beach or the
hillside, and builds his beams and joists upon it ; he
works long hours, intent and serious, until he can
proudly fling his tools down and say '' My house is
built"

Some men are too poor to spend precious days in
cutting planks, or they have not dogs enough to haul
timber from the woods away in the valleys of the
mainland, and so, for them, the housing problem
remains a problem. Some day, perhaps, there will
be model houses for such men as these, either let at a
small rent, or sold by instalments ; and so I fondly
dream of a healthy home for every Eskimo — ^but the
problem has its very practical side : who is to pay ?
I must say candidly that a good proportion of the
wooden houses that already exist are a real credit to
their owners. In some of the best I have seen sofas
and harmoniums, and even linoleum on the floor:
but such houses are the homes of the mighty hunters,
who keep a servant or two to help with the seal nets,
and who are able to afford such little luxuries out of
their earnings.

The average Eskimo house is a square room, with

rather cramped accommodation for everything that

goes to make up the daily round. Just inside the

door you may stumble over the carcases of a couple

of plump seals, brought in to thaw; on the wall

behind the stove a big oily sealskin is stretched on a

frame to dry ; one comer harbours a little table, on

which stands a stone lamp filled with nauseous seal-

809

ESKIMO HOUSES

oil, or maybe the seal-oil lamp is banished, and a
gaudy paraffin lamp from the store takes its place;
various queer-looking objects, such as snow-shoes,
harpoons, dogs* harness, whip, bladders for floats,
slabs of dried meat, bundles of straw for basket-
making, skin boots and clothing, strew the edges of
the floor or hang upon the walls, and a big comer is
curtained or partitioned off for a sleeping-place.
There may even be room somewhere for a new-bom
family of pups, brought in lest the other dogs should
gobble them up when their mother was ofi^ guard ;
and the children of the household are playing all over
the place.

Spare spaces on the walls are decorated with cards
and pictures, or flowery-wall paper; bottles, tins,
jars, and cheap ornaments stand upon tiny home-
made shelves, and one or two alarm clocks are sure
to be there, proclaiming their presence either by
untimely and ear-splitting chimings or by the very
loudness of their ticking. Anything will do to
beautify an Eskimo house. One of the firms that
supplied us with cocoa had the pleasing custom of
enclosing a big coloured show-card in each of their
packing-cases : these were a great prize for otir simple-
minded neighbours, and so it comes about that
various grimy little Eskimo huts on the Labrador
coast are graced to this day by the startling an-
nouncement that ^' So-and-so's cocoa is sold here " I

I found that warmth was the most serious thing

to be considered, for the Eskimos of these days have

got used to fires and cannot do without them. A

good many of them are even losing the sleek coating

of fat that the northerners possess, and the stove

takes the place of this natural overcoat ; but quite

SIO

ESKIMO HOUSES

apart from their personal feelings they need a stove
to thaw the seals, otherwise their work would be at
a standstill I was chatting to some of them about
the smallness of their houses. ^^Ah," they said,
''we need them small to keep warm. We cannot
manage to have more than one stove, for the woods
are so far away ; and we must have warmth to thaw
our seals." It is true: but some of the greater
himters have solved the problem for themselves. I
suppiose they got tired of seeing grease and blood
and remnants of seals slopping about on their hard-
earned linoleum, or perhaps they wanted more space
for the periodic feasts and palavers that are held in
^^ l>igg^i^ houses ; but, whatever the why and the
wherefore, some of the men have built a lean-to
against their house, or have partitioned off an end
of their big room, and have backed the stove up
against a hole in the wall. So they have a special
little room for the seals, warmed by the back of the
dwelling-room stove ; and when I found an improve-
ment like that, springing from pure Eskimo in-
genuity, I knew that it would soon be popular with
the people, and down it went as part of my plan
for those model dwellings I have in my mind.

** Yes," thought I, ** warmth is a problem ; but the
stuffy, evil-smelling atmosphere is another." In some
of those iglos, in winter, with their long snow tunnels
to keep the cold — ^and at the same time eJFectively
keeping the fresh air — ^away from the door, I have
had to gasp for breath. How can folks be healthy
in this sort of air ?

I am not writing of the characteristic Eskimo

smell : that cannot be abolished. Every house has

some degree of the same odour; dirty houses and

811

MAKING WINDOWS

dean, old houses and new, big houses and little, all
have their share, and every Eskuno carries a hint
of it about with him. It is the smell of seal-oil,
of oil-sodden boots and harness, of lamps and cookoy,
beds and clothes. I thought it would wash out
of the people themselves, but no ; unlimited baths
in hosfntal fSuled to dispel the suggestion in the air ;
it is a natural thing, the effect of a diet of raw meat
and fish and blubber. I asked one of our most
sensible men one day whether the people knew it.
'* Atsuk " (I don't know), he said, '' but we do know
that you KablunlLks (Europeans) have an odour of
your own. We can always tell if any of you have
been in our houses"! No, the Eskimo odour will
always be there, even in those model houses of my
dreams, but the stufiy, foetid air can be removed.
How to do it? Ay, there's the rub. I did some
serious cogitating about it, but, as things turned out,
the solution came in quite an off-hand and unex-
pected way. Tomas was building a new house,
and he came to me with a very simple request. ** I
want to build a good house," he said, *' because I
catch many seals. I want glass windows, not
windows of seals' bowels : I want to be able to see
out of my windows when the days are fine. Can
you find me a piece of proper wood for a window
frame among the wood that you have?" '*By
all means," I told him ; ** here is a piece of soft pine:
and you shall have it without paymoit if you will
make a window like this of mine that op^is on
hinges." Tomas studied my window, and opened
it and shut it, and grinned, and looked at me — and
coveted that piece of pine. ** Yes," he said, ** it shall

be;" and off he trotted with his prize— surely the

vis

STUBBORN LEARNERS

first Eskimo house-improvements prize I I walked
along several times to see how he was getting along
with his new house and his new window; and I
found that another man, quite a poor fellow, who
was building himself a tiny hut near by, was abo
making a window to open. He had seen Tomas
at work, and, of course, was inquisitive. ^* Hello,
Tomas, what sort of a window are you making ? "
"Ah," says Tomas, "new sort, very fine; see, it
opens on hinges." " Piovok (that looks good) : teach
me how to do it ; I must have a window like that"

Ay, even reforms can be infectious I

I do not for a moment want to take the credit
for those windows that opened on hinges ; it would
be unfair to generations of hardworking missionaries
if I did, for there were windows on hinges before ever
I came to Labrador; but I saw a solution to my
problem in that little incident It was a case of
working on the imitative faculties of these people,
and trusting to reforms to become habits.

What stubborn learners they are I Tell them to
do a thing, and they will do it out of mere obedience
so long as your eye is *on them ; but leave them to
their own devices, and they slip back to their old
ways at once. They do not see the ** why " of things.
When I ordered sanitary reforms, they always used
to raise their eyebrows. " Why should we do that ? "
they would say, ** our fathers never did it : it is not a
custom of the people."

But here was a peg to hang things on: the
Eskimos would imitate. Imitate 1 I have never seen
any one to equal them.

When I put on my skates, so as to have the

distinction of saying that I had skated on the North

818

IMITATION

Atlantic, out came the bojrs with slabs of firewood
and strips of bone — seal's ribs, mostly— or waste
scraps of hoop iron from the cooper's shop, and made
skates for themselves. They bound them to their
soft boots with moist seal-hide thongs, and twirled
and tumbled, and laughed and rubbed their bruises,
till they could catch me up and swoop lau^ung
round me, and sail off and catch me up again.

And they imitate so thoroughly too.

One day there had been a fimeral, and after it
was all over I heard a sound of singing. It was the
funeral hymn over again. I looked out, and saw a
group of boys, all standing round a long hole in the
snow, and singing lustily. When their singing was
finished they heaped snow into the hole, and built it
into a mound, and very deliberatdy patted it smooth
and then walked off two by two towards the village.
I could not help laughing at the young rascals, for
I suppose all children play at funerals. But these
little Eskimos were doing things properly, for after
the mock-mourners had all gone the moimd gave a
great heave, and a small boy poked his head up snd
crawled out, shaking the snow out of his shaggy hair
as he ran to join his mates.

Yes, the Eskimos would imitate. If Moses had
dug up the filth-sodden mud floor of his hut, and
replaced it with a neat layer of boards, sure enough
somebody else would want to do the same, and there
wouldbeagreattimeofdiggingandboarding. Some
of the men went off to the woods for planks ; others,
who had not dogs enough, or who were too poor to
spare the time, came to beg or buy our old packing-
cases. Some of them seemed to tiiink the marks cm

the cases a grand ornamentation of the flow, for they

814

li!

A SCRUBBING BRUSH EPISODE

turned the boards the proper way up, so that the

floors told tales of" Cube Sugar " and " Prime Lard "

and ** per Harmony to Okak." But the boards were

there, and the trampled slush that I have had to

splash through on my visits, and that reeked of

what Shakespeare might have had in mind when

he wrote " a very ancient and fish-like smell/' was

abolished.

But it was all very well to teach the people to

have wooden floors ; that was only half the lesson.

The floors wanted washing I Eskimo floors are

proverbially filthy ; the thing cannot be helped. If

the hunter is to earn his living, if his wife is to do

her work and make the most of his catch, the seals

must be thawed and cut up, and the floor will be

spattered with blood and oil. Floor-washing is an

established custom in most of the houses — in fact

many of them are scrubbed out every day; but it

looked as if it would be difficult to get the owners of

the dismal little iglos to alter their ways ; folks who

had only got a dim inkling of the value of ventilation

and dean floors, and who had mostly lived their

lives under the shade of seal-bowel window panes

and in the odour of blubber-soaked floors — ^it seemed

as if it would be hard to persuade thefn to scrub those

floors and open those windows. But the idea was

there, working in their own minds, talked over,

maybe, at their great palavers ; better times are in

store for the Eskimos, and the making of better

things is in their own grasp, though perhaps they

only partly know it. I got a hint of the trend of

things from an Eskimo woman, a nice quiet soul,

a widow, whose misfortune it was to live in a hut

of the most horrible sort. Her son was somehow

816

A SCRUBBING-BRUSH EPISODE

• il ;^IT^I

inspired to build a new house. Now it ha]
that Sarah used to do odd bits of work for us, and
we used to pay her mostly in kind. Her quaint
requests for payment would fill a page — once she
came and asked for a tin of Swiss milk (!) because her
son's wife had got a baby, and Sarah wanted to
celebrate the tremendous occasion that had made her
a grandmother, and a very young and blooming
grandmother too, by giving the baby a tasty and
appropriate present. I hoped, however, that the new
arrival would get fed as Eskimo babies ought, and
very likely the big members of the household would
eat the Swiss milk off their fingers. But to get
back to my story : on this particular occasion Sarah
giggled and was shy.

** What do you want, Sarah ? " (More giggles I)

This was strange, and I wondered whatever could
be in Sarah's mind. After much coaxing, out it
came. '' My son," said Sarah, *' has built a new
house, you know, and we have got a wooden floor.
1 should like to keep it clean, and scrub it often.
Will you g^ve me a scrubbirig'brush ? "

Never have I given anything more willingly!
I rushed off to get that scrubbing-brush, blessing
Sarah's good Eskimo heart for its spontaneous long-
ings after cleanliness.

One of the great difficulties that has always con-
fronted those who have spent their lives in teaching
the Eskimos is that the people, in the natural
conservatism of their minds, nearly always resent
new ideas and new suggestions. My own experience
has been that they are far more teachable and tract-
able when they are in a good humour. A certain

degree of good humour is the natural Eskimo state

816

THE MAGIC LANTERN

of mind, and it takes but a little to bring the amount
to an efifervescent, bubbling over stage.

Then was the time to point a moral ; then was
the time to propose some sanitary reform; then
was the time to teach some wholesome lesson. The
magic lantern was a great help in this direction : the
people shouted with glee to see their own faces on the
screen, and sat quietly listening while I told them
some Bible story or talked of better houses and ideal
home life.

I must confess that it took me some time to
understand their sense of humour. I thought that
anything obviously grotesque would make them
laugh, so I drew a caricature of a reindeer on a glass
slide and showed them that. I know that it was
funny, because the missionaries laughed; but the
Eskimos received it in stony silence. ^'Come," thought
I, '* this is a funny thing, you ought to enjoy this : "
and I left the grinning, knock-kneed thing on the
screen for a minute or two, and finally put in an
explanatory suggestion '* Tuktu-ai *' (a reindeer, eh).

Big Josefs small voice broke the silence: he is
the mighty hunter of Okak, and spoke with weight.
*' That is not like a reindeer : now we know that you
have never seen one. Come to the hunt with me
next Easter, and you will see what a reindeer looks
like ; then you will be able to make a better likeness."

The first laugh I got out of them was at a picture

of one of the Nain Eskimos crouching behind a rock,

aiming at an imaginary seal with his gun. They

roared with glee, and rolled about in their seats

shouting ** Look at him — ^ai-ai, just see — ^it is Joas of

Nain, and he is shooting left-handed." I had put

the slide in the lantern wrong side about I

817

MY HARMONIUM

I found it very easy to please the people ; they
would look at pictures by the hour, and as for music,
it was the very summit of bliss. When I got a new
harmonium with stops there was a constant pro-
cession of visitors to see the marveL They gave
deep grunts of wonder when I pulled out the stops
and caused the different tones, and leaned over to
pull them for themselves; and when the coupler
stop came out and the octave keys went down with-
out any fingers touching them they edged away
with apprehension, and then came crowding back to
see it again*

The best music, to their minds, is the gramo-
phone. That pleases them the most; it sings and
plays and talks and whistles; and, as one of the
people said to me one evening when I suggested
that they had had enough, '* We could listen to it all
night."

Some of them had never seen a talking machine
before, and I had to laugh at their bewilderment.
They got close up to the trumpet, to see what was
going on at the bottom of it ; they held the discs to
their ears, in the hope of hearing the music that
way ; they scrambled for the worn needle-points, and
carried them home as trophies; and all the time
they kept up a running fire of comments— " Ai-ai,
that is the voice of a very tall man ; nala, it is even
better than our brass band ; immal6, why cannot it
sing like an Eskuno ? "

818

CHAPTER XXVI

A Lonely Land— The Coming of the Ship — Our Postman —
Visitors — Labrador Gardens — The Language.

IABRADOR is a lonely land. That is its
^ reputation ; but we who live and work there
round the year find it such a little world of its
own that we have no time to mope and feel
lonely.

Time flies, even in lonely Labrador.

But however absorbed we might be in our
work and in the people around us, however much
our thoughts might move in our little Labrador
circle, we all of us looked forward to the month of
July to bring the great red-letter day of the year,
for in the month of July we expected the ship.
It seems a wonderful thing that so small a ship
as the Harmony — a barque of 222 tons, fitted
with steam and sails — should cross the Atlantic so
regularly, and never fail, year after year, to link
us up vrith home and kindred; but so it is. The
Harmony is in skilful hands : there are the prayers
of God's people behind her: and perhaps that is
the explanation of the thing.

We could never know the day; but as July

dragged by we' deserted the jetty on our daily

walks, and climbed the hills instead, stumbling

through sodden moss and patches of half-melted

snow for the sake of a view of the ocean. I know

that such hill climbing was futile, for the Eskimos

819

THE COMING OF THE SHIP

at their sealing-places are certain to see the ship
first and give some signal ; but it relieved our feel-
ings, and that was something. We wrote our letters,
we made room in the store for the new cargo of
supplies, we talked and talked and talked about
the ship— we could talk of nothing else — ^untU at
last there came a sudden shout, sudden in spite of
all our waitings. *' Pujoliarluit " (the big steamer)
it roared and shrilled from all parts of the village.
Guns banged; people came running, shouting as
they ran, racing for the jetty; and out on the
bay a man was paddling home as if for dear life.
As soon as he was near enough to be heard he
yelled '*A fire on Parkavik." That was enough;
a fire on the beach might be cookery, but a fire
on the hill was the signal; and he in his kajak
had seen the smdke and had fired the two bangs
with his gun that the people understood. Boats
came bustling across the bay, with sails spread
and oars all busy: and in half-an-hour the quiet
village was populous again. Every house seemed
to have a flag, from the big red ensign on the
Mission flagstaff to the bandanna handkerchief that
was fluttering on an oar out of somebody's window.
Even the old widow in the hut behind the hospital
was entering into the spirit of the day; she had
no flag, but she had sacrificed her red petti<MMit,
and was scrambling up her roof to pin it to a
tentpole propped against the eaves.

It was an hour or more before the ship came
into sight, and then, when the tall masts came
peeping over the rocks of the point and the little
black hull slipped silently into the mouth of the
bay, the shouting and banging b^an afiresh. The

THE COMING OF THE SHIP

men were wild with glee : I saw one brawny fellow
with a Winchester repeater letting off round after
round in his delight, until he had shot away enough
cartridges to account for dozens of prospective seals ;
he was as delighted as we, and tiiat was his way
of showing it.

One gets a trifle sentimental in Labrador; and
I never saw the ship come or go without a lump
in my throat. It means so much, both to us
and to the Eskimos, that everybody looks upon
it with real affection; and it was with throbbing
hearts that we waited for the anchor to drop.

The ship came slowly on and on, looking
strangely near in the clear air; we could see the
fur-clad captain on the bridge, and the first mate
standing on the bow, just over the painted angel that
spreads her wings beneath the bowsprit. The mate's
hand rose ; there was a sharp clatter, and the anchor
plunged into the water. At the same moment Jerry
the organist raised his voice, and the people joined
in the funous old chorale, '*Now let us praise
the Lord."

^* Gud nakorilavut
Omamut illtoAnut''

The Moravian Church uses it as a New Year s
hymn ; and I thought it fitted in rather well with the
coming of the ship, for that is by far the biggest
milestone in the roimd of the Labrador year.

The Harmony was our first source of news after

the long winter, and, naturally enough, we used to

go on board all athirst for information and bursting

with questions. How the captain must have smiled

to himself at the perennial volley.

821 X

OUR POSTMAN

<*Is the King alive and well ?"—'< How is the
world ? " — " Is there peace everywhere ? " — Such ques-
tions do not seem so odd if you rememher that we had
not seen a newspapa since the year before 1 And
letters! We got our big budget by the ship; but
there was always a winter bag by the overland nuiil
from Montreal to BJgolette, and this was handed
along by one means or another until we got it about
March.

During the winter we had a little Labrador post
of our own.

On the 20th of January big Josef started
south with his sledge and dogs, to meet the
messenger from the southern stations at Nain.
After a stay of two or three days to give the Nain
missionaries time to read and answer their letters —
days which Josef spent in going the round of the
village and delivering the laborious salutations of
which the Eskimos are so fond — ^he travdled back
again. We used to meet him as he drove up to the
Mission house, and shake his great hand, and smile,
and tell him we were glad to see him — and so we
were.

Sometimes there were a few belated European
letters in the bag, a welcome spice in the pile of
coast news ; aye, we knew what it was to fed thank-
ful for the postman, in Labrador.

Next day Jerry would take the mail sledge north-
ward, while Josef rested on his laurels and told tales
of his trip, and delivered himself of his burden of
salutations. He went about it with great solemnity.
He had all the greetings written down, and usually
called a mass meeting in one of the huts to get rid
of the most of them. Sometimes he had a general

OUR POSTMAN

message to deliver, and in such a case he would beg
leave to announce it after one of the meetings in
church. The congregation sat quietly in their
places, while big Josef rose and stalked solenmly to
the missionary's table. ** Jonas and his wife, Naine-
mint (Nain people), send greetings to all the people
of Okak," he would say in his quiet voice, and then
make his dignified way to his seat by the door, while
the people shuffled and began to pick up their hynm-
books ready for home.

Jerry, our northern postman, was a great man for
adventures ; he generally had something out of the
common to relate.

Once he broke through thin ice on a river, and
had to run all day long to keep his clothes from
setting sti£P and jointless — he must have known what
the old knights felt like in their armour: another
time he was caught in a storm, and had to spend a
couple of awfiil nights among the rocks and the
snow. When he wanted a drink of warm tea, he
cut chips off his sledge and made a fire. So much
for our great luxury, the postman.

Our other great luxuries were our occasional
visitors.

They used to come quite unexpectedly, for they

had no chance of giving warning : imagine our de*

light, therefore, at an unexpected vessel or sledge,

bringing news, and above all, bringing a fresh voice

to talk to us. I am afraid we rather bored our

visitors, dragging them into our rooms to make them

talk and tell us ,the news ; but let them be consoled,

because their visits were real godsends to us in our

lonely land, even though they had come, first of all,

to see the Eskimos and the scenery.

828

VISITORS

Certainly the Eskimos took great interest in our
visitors. I remember one gentleman who was on
the hill taking photographs of birds, snap-shotting
them in their wild haunts. The Eskimos could
not understand this. ''What is he doing?" they
said. '* Takka, see him» he is crawling on his hands
and knees among the stones ; ai, ai — ^now he is hiding
behind a rock — ^whatever is he after ? **

One wiseacre among them, who had perhaps
heard of Klondike, suggested that the gentleman was
finding gold I '' Goldemik/' they chorussed, and
after him they went, peering and muttering as he
crouched among the moss, and searching intently
wherever he happened to make a halt. I am not
surprised that they have the idea of gold, for the
rocks are rich in copper and iron, and several times
the people have brought shining lumps of pyrites to
me, to ask ** Is it gold ? "

I saw one visitor gazing with rueful oountaiance
upon a ruinous-looking heap of sticks on the jetty.
He had bought a kajak the day before, and had un-
vrisely left it out of doors to wait for the ship, and
during the night the dogs had made a meal of it
No doubt they found the sealskin cover tasty ; but
they had also made an attack on the oil-soaked
frameworic, gnawing it as if it were the bones of the
thing. The Eskimos are wise enough to put their
kajaks on poles ; I thought it was to keep tiketa dry,
but I see now that it is partly to keep them out of
the jaws of the dogs.

But work was the great thing that kept

us healthy in mind and body. While the people

were at home we were constantly among them;

while they wae away at their hunting and fishing

SNOW^LEARING

there was alwajrs work to be done, either outdoors
or in.

As soon as Easter was over we set to work on
the snow-clearing. This was a task for the women
and the old men, while the hunters were after the
reindeer. The snow that had drifted against our
walls during the winter had to be dug away: it
seemed an inmiense task, but to leave it undone
would mean that when the thaw came our floors
would be swamped and our foundations washed
away, so we followed the example of the Eskimos
and cleared it away. The biggest task was to dig
out the liver. This was buried under thirty feet of
snow, caked hard with the wind, and in some parts
of it the people had to work like navvies at a railway
cutting. The men used to cut the snow into blocks
with great sword-knives, and heap it on the sledges ;
then the women raced with the load down to the
beach, and tipped it among the ice*hummocks.
Blaster fell late one year^ and the river began to run
before its course was properly made. The first hint
I had of it was a noise at the back of the hospital,
and there I fomid a sort of miniature Niagara roaring
over the edge of the snoW'-drift and lashing against
our walls. The church floor was flooded ; and some
Eskimos in a hut near by woke from their slumbers
to find their chairs and their boxes floating about,
and themselves in bed in a house ftill of water. We
called for volunteers, and had soon given out all the
spades and shovels ; those who were too late for
spades took hatchets and snow-knives, poles, oars,
planks, and anything, and before the day was
out the river was running furiously in its proper
channeL

LABRADOR GARDENS

While we were directiiig the people at the snow-
clearing, we followed their example, and wore dai^
goggles to protect our eyes. The old Eskimo custom
was to wear a strip of wood with a narrow slit cut
in it over each eye ; but smoked glasses are so cheap
and easy to get, that the old fashion has gone out.
The Eskimos have not big enough noses to wear the
ordinary spectacles ; at the least jolt the spectacles
slip down into the wearer's mouth ; so they stitch the
glasses into a strip of black cloth, and bind it round
their heads.

Every spring, after the return of the reindeer
hunters, we had our meat-tinning time. The
hunters were very willing to bring legs of meat at a
reasonable price, and the washing, roastii^, cutting
up, and tinning of the meat made quite a busy week.
We put up enough reindeer steaks to last us two or
three dinners a week for a twelvemonth, and though
we were only amateurs the meat was always whole-
some. After the tinning came the gardening. This
sounds a remarkable thing, gardening in that pro-
verbially bleak and barren place, Lateidor ; but by
care and hard work the missionaries of years ago
have made gardens, and we reap the benefit of their
labours. There is not much soil; the spade soon
comes on clay and rock, and {Hrobably those old
missionaries had to carry soil in barrows and build it
into gardens before they could get their vegetables
to take root and thrive. Six or seven feet down the
ground is permanently frozen, as they discovered at
Nain a few years ago, when they were digging a hole
for a flagstaff. The thick blanket of snow that
covers the soil in the winter preserves some of the

roots; our English rhubarb used to come up year

896

LABRADOR GARDENS

after year, rather stringy and small, perhaps, but
none the less alive. We got the snow cleared away
in May, and then left the ground to thaw in the
sunshine. The actual planting out did not take
place until July, and in the meantime the vegetables
were growing in the house or under frames. Our
minds used to run upon gardening from as early as
February, when we sorted the likeliest of the potatoes
from the others, and laid them on trays in the warm
store-room to sprout; but we had to wait for the
soil to thaw, and it was not until the nights began to
get a trifle milder that we dared to put our cress
and lettuce and cabbage and potatoes in the open air.

Then the gardens wanted nursing.

Our three enemies were the dogs, the mice, and
the frost

The dogs were delighted to have a patch of

freshly dug soil for their romps and their scrambles,

but we managed to keep them out by the help of

wooden palings. Sometimes they climbed over, or

burrowed underneath, and then it was good-bye to

our garden stuff; but mostly we made things secure

enough to baffle them. The mice were a more

serious nuisance: they were wide-awake and very

hungry, and found our nice young shoots of lettuce

and cabbage very tempting, far better than buried

twigs and frozen roots. It was rather a laborious

thing to have to do, but in years when mice were

plentifid we went round every evening and covered

each shoot with an empty meat-tin, and made a

second pilgrimage in the morning to uncover them

all again. The frost we fought by covering each

row with a wooden framework ; and the old widows

who worked in the blubber yard made it their

8S7

THE LANGUAGE

Annual etre to go round at night and spread sacks
over the frame, and to take the sacks off and put
them away every morning. For this they got a
present of a coujde of dollars and an armful of green
vegetahles at the end of the season, and shrill were
their cries of '^Nakomdk/' and broad were their
grins of happiness, when the time came for them to
get their perquisite.

And this is how we managed to persuade the
hardier sorts of vegetables to grow to a moderate and
eatable siae before the ground froze again in October.

And among all our other work, we had the
language to leam. It is not an easy language, but
I have this to its credit: it is beautifully gram-
matical, governed by plain, straightforward rules,
and the rules are absolutely without excqitions.
For this last reason I have even ventured to say that
I would rather leam Eskimo again than any of the
languages I had to leam at schooL The great
difficulty is that the learning involves a prodigious
feat of memory; there are so many words for the
same thing under different circumstances ; and it is
quite the proper thing to build up a word of fifteen
or sixteen syllables by sticking all sorts of tags and
bits between the unchanging root of a verb and its
grammatical and expressive ending. To take a veiy
mild example —

'' Tikkipok — ^he comes ;
Tikki-niarasuarkdr-pok— he will probably try to come.''

On the other hand, there are quite short words
which express some picturesque idea, such as 6tck —
the seal which is basking on the ice in the spring
sunshine ; and, taken all together, the language is a

8S8

THE LANGUAGE

very storehouse for the seeker after somethmg
interesting. One thing that used to puzzle me was
the use of " Yes " and " No " in answer to questions.
If I said to a workman ''Have you not finished
yet ? " and he answered " No," he would mean " On
the contrary, I have finished.'' " Yes '' would imply
''Quite so, I have not] finished." This always
troubles new beginners, and I suppose that nobody
has escaped misunderstandings with the people over
the difference in usage. Another stumblii^-block
was their misunderstanding of dependent sentences.
One day my wife said to the servant girl,
" Veronica^ if you do not do your work better, you
will have to go home " — and home went Veronica on
the instant, sobbing and wailing at what she thought
was her dismissal. It is very pleasant to know that
the language has been compressed in a grammar
book and dictionary, for some of the pioneers must
have had serious hours of thinking and planning to
put abstract ideas in a way that the people could
understand.

When the missionaries came, there was no word
for "forgiveness'' in the whole of the Eskimo
language 1 They set about making one, and evolved
the splendid picture-word " IssumagijaujuQgnainer-
mik " based on the verb " issuma-vok " (he thinks).

And so the picture of forgiveness to an Eskimo
mind is " not being able to think about it any more."

8S9

CHAPTER XXVII

The Eskimo and the Mission

IT was in 1771 that the missionaries of the Mora-
vian Church came to Labrador. Before that time
very little was known about the Eskimo people.
Vessels seldom braved the stormy waters of Labrador,
or, if they did, they ventured but little among the
numberless rocks and islands that fringe the mainland
So it came about that the Eskimos were seldom seen ;
and the few reports that were brought to the civilised
world by returning fisher crews described them as a
totally savage and uncultured people. They seem to
have deserved the name; for the first men who
landed from the Missicm ships were killed.

But this ministering to those who live in the
remote comers of the world seems to have been a
specially attractive thing to the Moravian Church,
from the very beginning of its missions to the
heathen; and here was a race, far off indeed, but
none the less included in the old command, " Gro ye
. . . and preach the Gospel to every creature.*' The
missionaries came, and began their quiet work of
preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ by word and
example, a work that has been carried on without a
pause through all the years since then ; and so it has
come to pass that the bleak and terrible coast of Labra-
dor is peopled by a Christian race. Only at the furthest

north are there still heathen ; a tribe of wanderers

880

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

who are now clustered in their tents and snow huts
around the little wooden church at Killinek.

At the older stations, with their weather-beaten
wooden huts and their trim, white-painted Mission
houses, the people are bred and bom in a Christian
atmosphere, and life at these villages gives a true
picture of life in a native Christian community.

To see the people go to church is in itself an
inspiration : the bell rings, and in they flock. There
is no compulsion ; they go because they like to go ;
it is a pleasure to them.

Of course during the seasons of open water the
attendance is comparatively small; the people are
scattered at their hunting and fishing places, maybe
twenty miles from the village, and though a good
number of the nearer ones come by boat for the
Sunday services, it is in the winter that we see the
church crowded every day. If any one wants to be
cheered up, I recommend an Eskimo Christmas
service. There is a dignity about it : the missionary
has the people well in hand ; they listen eagerly to
what he has to say and read, and join right lustily in
the hymns : there is pathos, too, as you can see if
you look at the worn but beaming face of the cripple
packed among a pile of reindeer skins on the floor ;
there is humour, too, in the way some solemn old
hunter has to find a seat among the little children on
the front bench because the other places are all full ;
he lets himself gravely down while tiie children nudge
one another and edge away in awe.

It^is a charming sight, to look over that sea of

faces from the missionary's bench ; every eye is fixed

on the speaker, every face is tense and eager. In

the very front are the children, on their special low

881

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

benches ; at the back, against the wall, is the seat
for the mothers, where they sit with their babies
sleeping in. their hoods, <xr waking to gaze around and
whimper at the wonders they can see ; in between
are the boys and girls and grown up folks* Hardly
anybody stays at home : the doors are lodged against
the prowling dogs; the frozen dinner waits upon
the floor.

There is an Eskimo organist, and close to him
sits the Eskimo choir, ready to lead the hymns or
sing an anthem.

Jerry, our Okak organist, plays by ear, and coaxes
splendid harmony out of our aged pipe organ with its
octave of pedals and its row of haJf*a-dozen st<^.
For voluntaries he plays pieces from the onXonos or
tunes from the newest collections; and when the
hymns aie announced he pulls out his stops and
shuffles his feet on the pedals, and with a mi^ty
burst of music the congregation breaks forUi into
singing, while Jerry, with his magic touch, leads the
voices steadily on, in perfect tune and stately. time.

It is a charming sound, the sound of singing from
these rough people ; a sound the like of which was
never known in Labrador before the missionaries
came. The Eskimos possess no native music, no
traditional tunes, no melodious folk-songs of their
own ; the only music that they knew was the dismal
and monotonous rhythmic chant which the heathen
sorcerer used to aid his works of darkness. Some-
how the soil was in the people, and the seed of music
has taken root in it and changed the Eskimo nation
into one of the most musical of peoples.

Jerry is our bandmaster at Okak ; and on winter

mornings, when the snow is powdering down, and

8SS

An Eskimo Boat-buildbr

Ai uon u tbc ics orlbe lu ibowi ugni ot bialiini, Ibt Eiliim
nttti ud tbe nllus boM'boildcr is in gnat dcmnnd. It U quite

(K oT llic people ibM

Jeremias, Organist and Bandmaster at Okak

Jerry, iIm un of old Rulh. ii a veiy clever muiicun, and it able to pI*T clu
on tbe orgui. M«l of Ibe natin boiues bout i inuiicil iDitrument of lODie ion-

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

the chilly air nips the fingers, he leads his little troop
of bandsmen from house to house, delisting the
populace with the blare of the trumpets. He likes
to encircle himself with the bombardon, to lend a
solid foundation to the harmony ; but if one of the
men is away he is quite able to take the comet or
horn or whatever it may be, and leave the bottom
notes for Benjamin's trombone. It is hard work,
but the bandsmen are happy; the morning frost
may settle on their heads, the moisture may freease
inside their trumpets in spite of shawls and stockings
wrapped round them, the mouthpieces may stidc
to their lips with the cold ; but they are Eskimos ;
winter weather does not easily daunt them or numb
their fingers ; and, besides, to play a trumpet in the
band is one of the greatest honours that an i Eskimo
knows. Grood character comes first in the choosing
of the bandsmen.

Several of the old customs of the Moravian
Church have taken firm root among the Eskimos,
and though in England they are lost, in Labrador
they go on from year to year unchanged. Nature
has henmied the land of the Eskimos in with a
broad barrier of ice; the marvels of these modem
times, which are causing othar countries to move
with giant strides, leave the northern Labrador
practically untouched ; the years circle with a same-
ness that marks a little world; the people them*
selves are slow to change; and so the customs of
years ago still prevail The men and women sit
apart in the church, the men on one side, the vramen
on the other ; the various sections of the congrega*
tion — children, single men, single women, married
people, widows — all have their special festival days.

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

when they wear their native dress, and eagerly listen
to pointed sennons addressed specially to themsdves ;
modem hjrmn-tunes have not yet supplanted the
majestic old chorales.

The people have their own little customs: a
young girl ties her pbuted hair with a pink ribbon;
a married woman uses blue ; a widow, white. The
plaits at the sides hang down in front of the girl's
ears, dangling in neat little knots; but when she
becomes a full member of the church, attending the
communion service — and this she may not do until
she has reached the sensible age of seventeen — she
loops her side plaits under her ears and fastens them
at the back of her head. These are innocent little
things, which appeal strongly to the Eskimo love of
the picturesque, and suit their simple minds.

The practical control of the Eskimos has been

left in the hands of the Mission ; and the Mission,

in turn, has taken the wise course of appointing a

number of the people, generally three or four men

and the same number of women, to act as helpers

in the maintenance of law and order in the villages.

These helpers are called ^'Eivgat'' (literally

^* servants "), and their first duty is the care of the

church ; but they are the virtual leaders of the

village life. Though they are *' chapel-servants,"

their post is one of honour : they are chosen because

of trusty and sterling character, and their service

is for life. The least lapse fix>m moral uprightness

would mean deposal, butjl have only once known

such a thing to happen. It seemed strange to me,

when I thought of the old Eskimo custom of yirntlpng

the best hunter the leader, regardless of his character,

to see our Okak people listening with respect and

S84

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

approval to the advice of one of the very poorest of
the men, because he was a good man and a chapel-
servant t Times have changed; and the Eskimos
have learnt a better appreciation of a man's worth.

If there is a vacancy in their ranks, the remaining
Kivgat meet the missionary and talk over the
question of a suitable man or woman for the office,
and there never seems to be any great difference of
opinion about the right one to choose.

In addition to the chapel-servants, each village
has a committee of three or four men, elected by the
people themselves.

These men have more strictly temporal duties;
they lode after the outward welfare of the village,
and convey the wishes of the people to the mission-
aries. Elections are by ballot, and take place every
three years ; and weighty functions they are. In
our village of Okak there were four representatives,
and every man thus had the right to put four names
on a piece of paper: my duty was to collect the
papers in a bowl, while the men sat solemnly in
rows in the church. The missionary gravely
unfolded the papers, and read the names aloud,
while the store-keeper and I jotted down the
numbers. It was quite evident that the thing had
been talked over for many a day, for the voting was
practically unanimous, and the reading of each
paper produced a grunt of assent from the lines of
voters. There was one spice of comic relief to the
solemnity, and that was when we discovered that
some village humorist had written his own name
four times. ''Aron, Aron, Aron, Aron," read the
missionary; and the whole assembly went ofi^ into
roars of laughter, while those who were near enough

885

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

dapped Aioa cm the bade, and covered him with

conftisioQ. When the counting was finished the

missionary read the result^ and asked the four who

headed the poll to stand. << Are you willing to serve

dutifully as an elder of the people?'' he asked them

one by one, and when each had given his ** Ahaila''

of assent the meeting dispersed at the simple word

<< Taimak '' (so let it be).

These chapd-servants and elders are wonderfully

successful in maintaining the tone of native life ;

they are not only trustworthy people, but they have

high ideals too. Witness their action when the

drink evil began to get a grip upon the Eskimos.

That was in 1907, after some evil genius had taught

the people to brew a vile and powerful concoction

from treade and mouldy biscuits. Several of the

men b^an to get drunk, and prowled about with all

their evil passions loosed. The chapel-servants and

dders called a meeting of the men in one of the

biggest of the huts. '* This new habit is bad," they

said, ''it will ruin the people: let us cast it out."

And cast it out they did. Grave-faced men, with

care upon their shoulders, travelled from CHkak to

the stations nivth and south; men from the other

staticms came to Okak ; all were bent on the same

errand, the discussion of the drink question. They

returned from their joumejdngs with their aim

accomplished : " Kajusimavut," they said, '' the mind

of the people is made up — ^the brewing and drinking

must cease.'' They called the men together, and got

a promise from every one that the kegs of liquor

should be smashed and the drink poured on the

snow, and that there should be no more brewing;

and when one young man refused to smash his keg,

886

The Eskimo Schoolhastrr

>f ihc ni«( cultund of the Eikimoi., He a ptobablv tb

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

two of the chapel-servants went along to his hut and
did it for him. The drink evil was abolished ; and so,
by their own wish, the Eskimos became what they
had always been, a teetotal nation.

I suppose that it is a remarkable thing to find a
people amongst whom there are no prisons and no
police and practically no serious crime, but so it is
among the Eskimos of Labrador,

They are a peaceable, law-abiding folk ; and the
credit for it must be given to the simple Gospel that
has raised them fix>m the past of their race. There
is sin, yes ; they are prone to fall into their besetting
weakness, a relic of the old promiscuous tent and
snow-house life; but flagrant breach of order or
discipline is very rare, so much so that a thief is almost
an unheard-of being among these kindly, open-handed
folk.

I think the thing that pleased me most in my

study of this interesting people, was the fact that

they are still true Eskimos. In all their patient

preaching and teaching the missionaries have never.

forgotten that the Eskimo mogt remain an Eskimo if

he is to win his livelihood as a hunter in the frozen

climate of his land ; and while they have instilled

habits of morality and clean living, and have,* weeded

out habits that are bad and harmful, they have

urged the people to keep closely to their native foods

and habits of life, and clothing; in a word, their

policy has been to make the Eskimo a better Eskimo.

The natural isolation of Labrador has helped them in

tfiis, and has helped them, too, to stand between the

people and the vices that civilisation might bring if it

were not grafted on their nature by careful minds.

The Mission is still hard at work, preaching the

887 Y

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

simple Grospel and caring for the people. I wondered,
when I first went to Labrador, how some of those
Bible pictures, so familiar to us, could appeal to
a people living in so desolate a land. Tliere are
no sheep in Labrador, no cows, no milk and honey —
excepting the kind in tins ; no fruit-trees better than
the dwarfed brushwood that crawls upon the ground :
but the Eskimo is a man who is not much troubled
by doubts; he takes his Bible literally, drinking in
its teaching with a child's simplicity; and, by the
use of pictures and carefiil explanations, the Bible
stories have become as real and helpful to the Eskimos
as they are to us.

The Mission is educating the children : at every
station school is held on four days a week during the
winter months, and the children begin to attend after
their sixth birthday. Usually the smallest are taught
by an Eskimo ; a wise thing, for an Eskimo has the
knack of putting tilings in a way that the child mind
can grasp ; later, the missionary takes them in hand
and leads them from the stage of strokes and pot-
hooks and the spelling of queer syllables to real
writing and the reading of books, and even among
the mysteries of simple arithmetic. Reckonipg is
difficult ; it is foreign to the Eskimo nature, so that
even the numerals have had to be imported ; there
are no numbers in the Eskimo language beyond
twenty, and the word for twenty is '< a whole man —
ten fingers and ten toes." But in spite of difficulties,
by the time the boy and girl leave school they can
reckon dollars and cents, and find their numbers in
the hjrmn-book; and as for reading and writing,
every Eskimo on the coast, over the age of twelve

or thirteen, can manage so much, and their knowledge

888

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

of the Bible would put many a more civilised person
to shame.

There is not a very extensive literature at the
disposal of the Eskimo with a taste for reading ; the
Bible is the chief book, but besides it there are trans*
lations of The Pilgrim's Progress^ Christ}/ s Old
OrgaUy Jessica's First Prayer^ a book of short read*
ings in natural history and general knowledge, the
various school books, the hymn-books used in the
church — and the newspaper I The Eskimo newspaper
is by no means a daily ; rather it takes the form of
an annual budget, printed by the missionaries at Nain
during the winter ; but it teUs the people something
of the doings of other lands, and it helps to stir their
loyalty as British subjects. I see by the copy that
reached me by post the other day, that even the
Eskimos are beginning to write articles, and doubt-
less they enjoy the conundrums that fill up a space
at the foot of one of the columns. The people like
their newspaper, and I think that it deserves its title,
though it be an unwieldy one in these days of crisp
writing : Aglcdt lUunainortut (The Paper for Every-
body). Far away from those who read these lines,
shut in their lonely land by the great ice-barrier, the
missionaries are standing at their posts ; and by their
quiet labours, it seems to me, they are working out
the saving of a nation.

I lay my pen aside, with my mind still full of the
memories that are so vivid to me. Brown, smiling
&ces pass before me ; familiar names sound in my ears ;
bright eyes look into mine ; musical voices sing out-
side my window ; gruff shouts echo as the boys come
sliding down the hill ; Jerry and his bandsmen march

along, waking the village with their trumpet notes ;

8S9

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

thelpoor girl on the bed of reindeer skins whispers
her ^*Nakom6k;" the crowd on the slope of the
frozen beach sings me off into the storm ; the voice
of little Johannes calls above the whining of the
dogs; and as I bid adieu to my neighbours the
Eskimos I pass on to my reader the noble old
greeting that I heard so often —

" Aksunai."

840

INDEX

Abia, 103, 112

Accidents, 63, 74, 181, 184, 219,

234
Adoptioiu, 80
Akpik, 71

Aksanai (meaning of), 26, 61
Alaska, 22, 23

Baby, 81

JBaffin's Land, 23, 211

Band, 332, 333

Barrenness of Labrador, 22, 38, 47

Bears, 20, 43, 200, 206, 231, 266

Beliefe, heathen, 29, 43

Bei^amin, 99, 272

Benjie, 306

Berries, 38, 286

Birthdays, 101

Blowhole, 244

Bob, 27

Boots, 32, 68, 69, 109, 140

Boys, 92, 236, 246

Bravery, 76, 181, 267> 267, 268,

276, 277
Banting, snow, 96, 241
Button Ldands, 27, 28, 29, 266

Carpenters, Eskhno, 261, 262, 269,

273
Garring, ivory, 106

Character, Eskimo^ 21, 102, 103,
166, 161, 186, 189, 202, 221, 230,
234, 247, 261, 270, 273, 286, 293,
294, 304, 313, 316, 336, 337

Charm of Labrador, 46, 48

Children, 31, 80 fP., 263

Choice of names, 87 ff.

Christmas, 63, 331

Cleanliness, 109, 316

Oothing, 27, 31, 68, 108

Cod, 263, 264

Cold, 56, 69, 60, 120, 132, 162, 186,
212,248

Cooking, 31, 32, 196, 280

Cousins, 278, 298

Customs, Eskimo, 70, 71, 76, 78,
90, 162, 163, 211, 223, 225, 232,
261, 278, 295, 326, 333

Cut-throat, 243

Daniel, 193 £, 229

Dignity, 68, 102

Direction, sense of, 187, 189, 236

Doctors, Eskimo, 289 if.

Dogs, 46, 62, 94^ 119, 122, 137, 144,

147 if., 169, 160, 176, 183, 239,

242, 266, 261, 324, 327

danger from, 160, 163

disentangling the, 173

feeding the, 152, 164

Dolls, 91
Drink, 336

Education, 338
Embroidery, 106

841

INDEX

Eadannoe, 84, 35, 112, 137, 162,

ler, W, 277, 299
Etkimo, meaning of, 281
EBkimos^ their origin* 22

appeennee of, 48^ 50, 215

the, 123, 141, 176, 211, 248,

266, 279, 337

Familj likenen, 31, 85

Fataliim, 294, 297

FeTer, 129, 138

Fishing, 73, 112, 113, 247, 253

Fbwen, 47, 284

Food, 70, 131, 165, 240^ 279

Fozea, 226, 227, 229

Froat-bite, 120, 169, 182

VnaoBB. meat, 217

Fnra, 226^ 227, 230

Gamea,91
Gardens, 326, 327
Good-hnmour, 34, 316
Government, village, 324 ff.
Graves, heathen, 23, 43, 99, 136
Graj's Straits, 26, 27
Greenland, 22, 23, 246
Gans, 185, 205, 233 IF.
Gnsta^ 217, 229

Happy Hunting Grounds, 43
Harmony, the, 25, 48, 55, 256, 274,

319 321
Harpoon, 24, 96, 205 ft, 219
Health, 129, 306
Heathen beliefr, 24, 43

graves, 23, 43, 99, 136

Hebron, 49, 106, 114, 119, 124, 129,

137, 142, 144, 145, 275
Heredity, 85, 97, 109

Hospital, Okak, 51, 260, 264, 267,

279,302
Houses, Eskimo, 201, 212, 307 E.

Seelglo
Humour, sense o^ 64, 155, 196, 288,

317,335
Hunthig, 24^ 28, 72, 204 £

loe, 56, 57, 96, 194, 214

brealdng, 248

new, 56, 139

Iglo, 38, 136, 307
Imitation, 216, 313
Indians, 110, 111, 281
Inflnena, 129, 291
Innnit, 22, 28, 43
Invitation, Eskimo, 125
Ishmd, Resolution, 29, 43
Islands, Button, 27, 28, 29
Ivorj carving, 105

Jakko, 219

Jakobus, 241

Jerrj, 114, 115,117, 119, 146, 204 ff.,

237, 272, 302, 321, 323» 332
«ngger, 73
Johannes, 133, 134, 154 iL, 162, 170,

182 ff., 218, 237
John, 143, 144

little, 66 £

Josef, 271, 317, 322

Joshua, 106, 107

Juliana, 58, 272, 280, 289

Julius, 64« 114, 115, 117, 119, 120,

145, 149, 154 £, 170 ff., 182£,208

KMi^k (canoeX 24^ 28, 30, 96^ 204,

218, 246, 324
Kettnra,278

848

INDEX

Kiglapeit Monntains, 167, 174^ 176,

177, 184^ 1»7, 198
KUlinek, 25 £, 117, 256, 288, 331
Kivgat, the, 334, 335
Kristian, 153, 170 ff.

Labrador, 21, 25, 46, 47» 48, 64,
129, 180, 181, 211, 241, 307, 319,
322, 326, 330, 332, 333, 337

Language, Eeldino, 247, 261, 266,
293,328

LaziiiesB, 104

Literature, 339

Lizetta, 287, 297

Laka8,224

Maria, 266^ 270, 292
Martin, Bishop, 115

223 ff.

Meat-tixuuDg, 326

Medidne, 266, 289

Mele, 227 ff.

Mice, 47, 241, 285, 327

Misrionariee, Moravian, 24, 330 ff.

Missionary at Okak, 51, 52, 54, 58,

265
Morals, 334, 337
Mosquitoes, 258
Motor boat, 302 ff
Mugford, Cape, 73^ 276
Mushrooms, 285
Music, 65, 318, 382

Nain, 170, 182, 189, 200, 277
Names, 87

Nappartok, 64, 145, 147
Nennok (white bear), 256, 257
Newfoundland, 254
Newspaper, Eskimo, 299, 339
Nipko, 282, 283, 284
Northern Star^ the, 302

Odour, characteristic, 312

Okak, 44, 47, 49, 79, 99, 106, 108,

109, 115, 117, 129, 215, 248, 257,

335
Old age. 111

Organist, Eskimo, 210, 332
Ornaments, 310
Otok-hunting, 245

Parkavik, 121, 320
Partridge, 168, 231, 283
Panlus, 60, 208, 231, 283, 301
Pocket, the Eskimo, 109
Postman, 322
Proportion, sense o^ 118
Puppies, 95, 310

Rain, 34, 156
Ramah, 49
Raven, 151
Rebekah, 267
Reindeer, 232 ff
Resolution Island, 29, 43
Rifle, 205

Ringsof stones, 30
Running, 188, 276

Saeglek, 128

Samuel, 65, 103, 112

Sarah, 270, 293, 316

School, 99, 338

teachers, 99, 172, 211, 272,

338
Scurvy, 284
Sea, freecing of, 56
Seal, 35, 207, 209, 213, 223, 228,

243 ff., 256, 309

848

INDEX

Seal meat, 70, 284

Sealsy naes of, 243

Shark, 43, 208, 213

Sheigo, 127

Simon, Rat. H., Musionary at

Okak, 62, 265
Simplidty, 60, 102, 228, 274, 338
Sina, 217 €F.
Singing, 102, 172, 200, 271, 278,

321
Skating, 57
Sledge, making a, 114 £

strength of, 61, 222

Sleeping-hag, 166, 175
Smoking, 110, 250
Snow-clearing, 325
Snow-honaes, 36, 37, 161, 162 ff^

175, 307
Snow-knife, 162
Snow, Mft (Maiya), 146, 176
Storm, 74^ 143, 176, 181, 186, 287,

303
Snperrtitions, 41 ff., 295
Surgery, Eskimo, l7l, 276

Temper, 103, 246

Tent (tnpek), 29, 30, 31, 32, 83,

243,255
Thrift, 286
Tok, 61, 113
Tomgak,42,211
Toys, 99
Training of children, 82, 91, 98.

Sm School

Training of dogs, 94, 96
Travelling box, 135
Trees, 38, 64, 65, 115, 139
Trout, 113, 247
Tnglayi, 39, 40, 41
Tnktn (reindeerX 231 ff., 230
Tutjikrlnk, 29
Tntjat, 27, 28, 29
Typhus fever, 138

Uivak, 133, 141

Vegetobles, 284, 326, 327, 328
Veronica. 274. 283, 302. 329

Walrus, 24, 26, 28, 106, 133, 205,

221
Washing, 110, 315
Watar-fetehin^, 61
Water-finding, 169
Wedding, 76
Whip, 94, 148, 150, 160
Wolf, 22, 167, 231
Wolverine, 230
Woman, travelling, 123
Work, men's, 104^ 105
women's, 68, 105, 107, 112.

287
Workmen, Eskimo, 261, 262

Printed by BALLAHTm. Habbom 6* Go.
Bdinboigh 6* London

" O

O /

MAY 1971

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